Russia has begun testing the first samples of the made-in-India batch of its Sputnik V vaccine, the embassy in New Delhi said on Friday, with plans to produce 300 million doses—thrice what was earlier reported—in 2021.
Kirill Dmitriev, CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) which is backing and marketing the vaccine, said RDIF had agreements with four large manufacturers in India in an interview with Rossiya TV. “India will produce about 300 mln doses or more of the vaccine for us next year," he said.
Dmitriev said that 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 said.
Dmitriev had earlier said that production of Sputnik V had began in India, Korea, Brazil, and China.
In August, Sputnik-V became the first coronavirus vaccine to be registered by any country after it passed clinical trials in Russia in June and July. Volunteers started receiving the vaccine on September 9.
In late November, the Gamaleya National Center of Epidemiology and Microbiology in Moscow announced that its vaccine had an efficacy of over 95 per cent, based on data from over 16,000 volunteers. Questions over the vaccine’s actual efficacy have emerged, with Stephan Evans, epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and tropical Medicine telling the UK Science Media Centre that a further follow-up was needed as “the results are compatible with a much lower efficacy—60 per cent—based on [the] data.”
On December 11, AstraZeneca said it would be testing a dosage combination of its vaccine and Sputnik V in a clinical trial that would “study the possibility of boosting their vaccine’s efficacy through the application of this combined approach”.
Dmitriev welcomed the move, saying “This unique example of cooperation between scientists from different countries in jointly fighting coronavirus will play a decisive role in achieving a final victory over the pandemic globally.”
The Serum Institute of India, which has a production agreement with AstraZeneca for its vaccine, plans capacity to make over 2.5 billion doses of vaccines a year. Under the global COVAX Alliance, 2 billion doses are intended to be made available across the world by the end of 2021
