COVID-19: Beware of Russia’s Sputnik V Vaccine - Immunologist warns

The Immunologist said Sputnik V has not been approved by any of the large continental bodies, creating a room for concern

COVID-19: Beware of Russia’s Sputnik V Vaccine - Immunologist warns

An immunologist, Dr Yaw Bediako has advised that Ghana should delay its vaccination programme using Russia’s Sputnik V until all safety concerns have been addressed.

His comments follows the rejection of the vaccine in Brazil after the country’s health regulator found the jabs unsafe.

Meanwhile, the Health Minister Kweku Agyeman Manu has revealed that Ghana was expected to receive 300,000 doses of the Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine in a week to boost its vaccination programme.

The first phase of the vaccination was carried out with over 200,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine from WHO’s COVAX facility.

But Dr Bediako, a scientist at the West African Center for Cell Biology Pathogen, wants health authorities to pause on the vaccination move.

“We have to be very cautious given that this information (from Brazil) has come up,” he warned as quoted by theghanareport.

“The prudent thing is to wait for more investigations” until a green light from a reputable European agency before Ghana administers the Sputnik V vaccine to the public.

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Dr Bediako explained, “Sputnik V has not been approved by any of the large continental bodies, ” including WHO, US FDA, and the European Medicines Agency.

But some countries have given the green light for usage, including Ghana, based on “documentation by the manufacturer and the clinical trials that were done”.

Dr Bediako pointed out that “Many of the countries that have approved it does not have the capacity to do detailed follow-up, so they basically base their assessment on what has been done elsewhere.”

Before the Brazilian update, he had also supported Sputnik V because data suggested that “it was okay, but the new data raises questions.”

According to him, the batch sent to Brazil might have been compromised, “so it may be a quality control issue and not that all the Sputnik V was bad.”

He said it could also be a problem at production, which still raises red flags because “we do not know which batch we (Ghana) is getting”.