Covid-19 roundup: As­traZeneca team finds a sur­prise Covid-19 vac­cine part­ner; Bio­gen con­fer­ence linked to 300K cas­es

With ques­tions still swirling over its Covid-19 vac­cine’s true ef­fi­ca­cy, As­traZeneca is pur­su­ing a sur­pris­ing ap­proach: com­bin­ing their ade­n­ovirus vac­cine with the Russ­ian-backed Sput­nik V vac­cine.

The British phar­ma and the Gama­leya In­sti­tute, which de­vel­oped Sput­nik V, will ex­plore whether they can in­crease ef­fi­ca­cy by giv­ing an ini­tial dose of one vac­cine and then a boost­er dose of the oth­er.

Peo­ple can de­vel­op im­mu­ni­ty to an ade­n­ovirus vec­tor it­self af­ter the first dose, po­ten­tial­ly in­ter­fer­ing with the sec­ond dose’s ef­fec­tive­ness. But the re­searchers they can avoid that vec­tor-im­mu­ni­ty by com­bin­ing two dif­fer­ent vec­tors in a sin­gle reg­i­ment. A sim­i­lar prin­ci­ple was be­hind the Sput­nik V vac­cine it­self, which us­es both an Ad26 virus and an Ad5 virus.

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