India to receive first batch of Russia’s Sputnik V covid vaccine on May 1
- Russia's RDIF sovereign wealth fund, which is marketing Sputnik V globally, has already signed agreements with five leading Indian manufacturers for over 850 million doses of the vaccine a year.
India will receive a first batch of Russia's Sputnik V vaccine against COVID-19 on May 1, the head of the Russia's sovereign wealth fund, told Reuters. However, he did not specify how many vaccines would be in the first batch or where they would be made. “The first doses will be delivered on May 1,” Kirill Dmitriev, said, adding he hoped Russian supplies would help India navigate its way out of the pandemic in time
India is battling the second wave of coronavirus that its healthcare system. On Monday, India reported more than 352,000 new COVID-19 cases, a global record for the rise in daily cases for the fifth straight day.
Many countries like Britain, Germany, France and the United States have pledged to send urgent medical aid.
Russia's RDIF sovereign wealth fund, which is marketing Sputnik V globally, has already signed agreements with five leading Indian manufacturers for over 850 million doses of the vaccine a year.
The RDIF has said it expects production of the vaccine in India to reach 50 million doses a month by the summer and to rise further.
The Indian government has waived customs duty on the import of COVID vaccines as well as medical grade oxygen and related equipment as the nation battled its worst health crisis.
Other global vaccine manufacturers like Moderna and Johnson and Johnson have been urged to seek emergency use approval in India.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi had last week interacted with vaccine manufacturers of the country via video conference and urged them to continuously scale up their production capacity to inoculate all Indians in the shortest possible time.
The Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) had in January given the emergency use authorisation for two COVID-19 vaccines -- Covaxin of Bharat Biotech and Covishield of Oxford-AstraZeneca manufactured by Serum Institute of India in Pune. Earlier this month, the DCGI also gave approval to Russian vaccine Sputnik V.
Indigenous vaccine candidates of Zydus Cadila, Biological E and Gennova are also in the pipeline and are in advanced clinical trials in India.
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First Published:27 Apr 2021, 05:38 AM IST
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