'Ready to start deliveries': Russia's COVID-19 vaccine Sputnik V to be produced in India

After Russia announced that its COVID-19 vaccine, Sputnik V is up to 95% efficient against the disease, it has also said that the global supplies of the doses will be produced in India among other nations. To match the total requests of 1.2 billion doses of Sputnik V vaccine that have come from more than 50 nations, the international partners of Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) including India, Brazil, China, South Korea and other countries will be producing the same.

The world’s first registered COVID-19 vaccine has announced its efficacy to be 91.4% based on the interim analysis of the data gleaned from 28 days of the stage-3 clinical trial involving 40,000 people in Russia. Moreover, the preliminary data obtained by volunteers 42 days after the first dose that corresponding with 21 days after the second dose indicates that the efficacy of the vaccine above 95%. 

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The efficacy of the two-dose vaccine, Sputnik V produced at Gamaleya Institute in Moscow is even more groundbreaking as it would be introduced in the international markets at a price of less than $10. Therefore, it would be two or more times cheaper than the mRNA vaccines by other drugmakers that have also shown a similar level of efficacies. Moreover, it will be free of cost of the Russian citizens. 

After Pfizer-BioNTech declared its vaccine to be 95% effective and Moderna’s vaccine's efficacy was determined to be 94.5% in early trials, Russia’s Sputnik V announcement on November 24 also came hot on the heels of the Oxford University-AstraZeneca vaccine's overall efficacy being pegged at 70.4%. 

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Russia hails efficacy as ‘most important tool’

After facing criticism initially for racing through medical research for the sake of gaining an upper hand amid global competition, the Russian government hailed the November 24 announcement as the “most important tool” in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. Russia’s health minister Mikhail Murashko said that “The data demonstrating high efficacy of the Sputnik V vaccine gives us hope that we will soon obtain the most important tool in the fight against the pandemic of the novel coronavirus infection.”

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Read - Russia's 'Sputnik V' COVID-19 Vaccine Shows Over 91.4% Efficacy As Per Interim Trial Data