MOSCOW: Russian scientist Denis Logunov, a lead developer of the Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine, said on Friday that the shot had proven itself 97.6% effective against COVID-19 in a real-world assessment, based on data from 3.8 million people.

The new effectiveness rate is higher than the 91.6% rate outlined in results from a large-scale trial of Sputnik V and published in The Lancet medical journal earlier this year.

Using a database of people who received both doses of the vaccine, scientists at Moscow's Gamaleya Institute, which developed it, calculated a real-world effectiveness rate of 97.6%, Logunov said during a presentation for the Russian Academy of Sciences.