Coronavirus: Russia ready to trial combined AstraZeneca, Sputnik V vaccine in Ukraine

Russia is ready to conduct clinical trials in Ukraine of a COVID-19 vaccine combining its Sputnik V with a vaccine developed by AstraZeneca together with Oxford University, the head of Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) said on Saturday.

Russia’s sovereign RDIF, which is marketing the Sputnik V vaccine abroad, announced in December trials to test a combination of the AstraZeneca vaccine with the Sputnik V shot to see if this can boost the efficacy of the British drugmaker’s vaccine.

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Russia reported 26,301 coronavirus cases over the past 24 hours, the country’s anti-coronavirus crisis center said on Saturday.

The new cases bring Russia's tally of confirmed COVID-19 cases up to 3,212,637, state news agency TASS reported.

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In another development, Britain will allow people to be given shots of different COVID-19 vaccines on rare occasions, despite a lack of evidence about the extent of immunity offered by mixing doses.

In a departure from other strategies globally, the government said people could be given a mix-and-match of two COVID-19 shots, for example if the same vaccine dose was out of stock, according to guidelines published on New Year’s Eve.

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