Yesterday, Russia announced that the first phase 3 trial interim analysis of their Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine showed 92% efficiency, but many questions remain. Meanwhile, Moderna announced that they would be submitting the first set of their phase 3 trial vaccine data for analysis very soon.

The race to develop a safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine has reached a new level. This week saw announcements from three of the companies who are currently running phase 3 trials of their vaccine candidates.

On Monday, Pfizer and BioNTech said that their experimental mRNA vaccine was 90% effective based on an interim analysis of 94 cases of COVID-19.

Yesterday, the Gamaleya National Center of Epidemiology and Microbiology announced that their interim analysis, based on 20 confirmed cases of COVID-19, showed an efficiency of 92%.

However, neither Pfizer nor the Russian team have shared their data yet, leaving many questions unanswered.

Moderna have followed suit, with a press release that explained that they had seen an increase of COVID-19 cases across all of their phase 3 trial study sites in the last week. The company have now collected enough data, based on at least 53 cases of COVID-19, to prepare this for the first interim analysis.