MOSCOW: India will produce about 300 million doses of the Russian Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine in 2021, Head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) Kirill Dmitriev said.
"In India, we have agreements with four large manufacturers.... India will produce about 300 million doses or more of the vaccine for us next year," he said, in an interview to Rossiya 24 TV channel, quoted by Tass News Agency.
Tass further reported that Dmitriev noted, out of 110 production sites that negotiated production of Sputnik V, RDIF chose 10 that meet its requirements. "The Russian Sputnik V will be actively produced in the world and we see that this is built on a safe platform based on the human adenovirus," Dmitriev added.
The Russian embassy in India on Friday, quoting the RDIF CEO, said that Russia is testing the first samples of its Sputnik V vaccine against COVID-19 that were produced in India. Sputnik V, the world's first COVID-19 vaccine, is over 95 per cent effective, said Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday.
Taking to Twitter, Russia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) cited Putin saying that some health specialists have claimed that the vaccine's protection level reaches up to 96-97 per cent. The world COVID-19 caseload is nearing 75 million cases, as per the latest updates by Johns Hopkins University.
The COVID-19 Dashboard by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University (JHU) reported that the world tally stands at 74,952,221 and 1,662,127 fatalities due to the virus, as of 9:56 am IST.
About 42,318,910 patients -- who tested positive for COVID-19 worldwide -- have recovered from the disease, according to the dashboard further reporting that India continues to maintain pole position when it comes to most recoveries in the world with as many as 9,520,827 recoveries reported in the country.