The central government's Subject Expert Committee (SEC) has denied permission to Dr Reddy's Laboratories for conducting Phase 3 trials of Russia's COVID-19 vaccine Sputnik Light in India. "The SEC has denied permission to Dr Reddy's to conduct phase-3 trials on the Russian vaccine Sputnik Light in India," sources said.

After launching Sputnik V, Russia had introduced a new single-dose vaccine called Sputnik Light in May. Sputnik Light has also been developed by the Russian Ministry of Health, the Gamaleya National Research Centre of Epidemiology and Microbiology and the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF).

The RDIF had earlier said that the Russian Sputnik Light Coronavirus vaccine demonstrates 78.6 per cent to 83.7 per cent efficacy among the elderly, according to real-world data collected by the Ministry of Health of the Buenos Aires province (Argentina).

According to the data from over 186,000 people aged 60-79, more than 40,000 of whom received a shot of Sputnik Light (first dose of Sputnik V) as part of the mass-scale civil vaccination programme, the infection rate between 21st and 40th day from the date of receiving the first dose was only 0.446 per cent. At the same time, the infection rate among the non-vaccinated adult population was 2.74 per cent for a comparable period, according to an official release.

The safety, efficacy, and lack of negative long-term effects of adenoviral vaccines have been proven by more than 250 clinical studies over two decades.