Russia develops COVID vaccine with new antigenic composition

Given the emergence of a new strain of COVID-19 "delta-omicron", a vaccine with a new antigenic composition has been developed in Russia, said Director of the Gamaleya Center of the Ministry of Health of Russia, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Alexander Gintsburg, Report informs citing Interfax.

At present, "we are waiting for the Ministry of Health to introduce a regulation that will allow us to replace one antigenic composition of Sputnik V with another," he said.

Answering one of the questions, he stressed that "the current Sputnik vaccine works worse against the new Omicron compared to previous strains."

"The emergence of a new strain delta-omicron suggests that there are still ways of variability based on recombination. If two different viruses enter the cell at the same time, they can exchange part of their own with each other," he added.