India to produce 300 million doses of Sputnik V vaccine in 2021

India will produce around 300 million doses of the Russian COVID-19 vaccine Sputnik V in 2021. This was informed by the Head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) Kirill Dmitriev.

Dmitriev said that the RDIF has agreements with four large manufacturers in India and they will produce more than 300 million doses or more of the vaccine next year. The RDIF head said this during an interview to a Russian TV channel.

Dmitriev further informed that the Russian Direct Investment Fund chose 10 production sites that met its requirements out of the 110 that had negotiated production of the coronavirus vaccine. He assured that 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,

Key Highlights 

•The Russian embassy in India  quoting the RDIF CEO said on December 18, 2020 that Russia is testing the first samples of its Sputnik V vaccine against COVID-19 that were produced in India.

•Russian President Vladimir Putin also stated on December 17, 2020 that Sputnik V, the world's first COVID-19 vaccine, is over 95 per cent effective.

•Russia's Foreign Affairs Ministry cited Putin saying that some health specialists have claimed that the vaccine's protection level reaches up to 96-97 per cent.

Background 

The announcement comes as the global COVID-19 caseload is nearing almost 75 million cases, as per the latest updates by Johns Hopkins University.

The current global coronavirus case tally stands at 74,952,221, which includes 1,662,127 fatalities and about 42,318,910 recoveries.

India continues to maintain the top position when it comes to most recoveries in the world with as many as 9,520,827 recoveries reported in the country.