After developing 1st Covid-19 vaccine, Russia now wants partnership with India for mass production

New Delhi: When the world is scrambling hard to develop a vaccine against the novel Coronavirus, Russia got its ‘Sputnik V’ vaccine approved. Russian President Vladimir Putin, briefing the press, had already told that his daughter was administered the first dose.

Sputnik V has been developed by the Gamaleya Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology, along with the RDIF. However, the vaccine is yet to complete its Trial-3 phase. Amid rising pressure from the world, it has announced to conduct Phase-III trial on about 40,000 humans.

Now , to expedite its mass production, Russia is eyeing Indian pharmaceutical firms and has extended an invite in the same regard.

Russia is looking for a partnership with India for producing COVID-19 vaccine Sputnik V as it is among those nations with ‘extreme production capacities’, said Kirill Dmitriev, the CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF).

He expressed confidence that the partnership will be able to meet the demand for Sputnik V vaccine against COVID-19.

“We have conducted detailed research and we have analyzed capacities. Countries like India, Brazil, South Korea and Cuba have extreme production capacities. And we do see that any of these countries may become the international hub for the creation of our Sputnik V vaccine,” he said at a virtual press conference attended by journalists from around the world.

‘We look to partnerships with Indian drug companies’

“We look to Indian drug producers to co-partner as we believe India is capable of producing Gamaleya Institute vaccine and it is important to say that this partnership should produce a vaccine that enables us to cover the demand that we have received,” he added.

Dmitriev said Russia has received one million requests for doses of its COVID-19 vaccine from different countries and it has a capacity of producing of 500 million doses a year.

“We believe our partnership with producers or manufacturers of our Sputnik V vaccine is going to be very important,” he said.

The vaccine received a registration certificate from the Russian Ministry of Health on August 11 and, under emergency rules adopted during the COVID-19 pandemic, can be used to vaccinate the population in Russia.