Will produce over 850 mn doses in India annually: RDIF after DCGI clears Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine

The Russian Direct Investment Fund said that India has become the 60th country to approve the Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine.

Representational Image (Reuters)

New Delhi: Hours after the Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) approved the emergency use authorisation of the Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine on Monday (April 12, 2011), the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) announced that it is aiming to produce more than 850 million doses per year in India.

"Over 850 million doses of Sputnik V are going to be produced in India annually sufficient to vaccinate more than 425 million people around the world," the RDIF CEO Kirill Dmitriev said in a press statement.

Dmitriev added, "The Russian vaccine has efficacy of 91.6% and provides full protection against severe cases of COVID-19 as demonstrated by the data published in one of the leading medical journals The Lancet."

The RDIF also informed that India has become the 60th country to approve Sputnik V and is the most populated country to register the Russian vaccine. 

"Total population of 60 countries where Sputnik V is approved for use is 3 billion people or about 40% of the global population," the RDIF stated.

It has also been approved in countries like Russia, Belarus, Argentina, Serbia, Algeria, Palestine, Venezuela, Paraguay, Hungary, UAE, Iran, Mexico, Lebanon, Myanmar, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Iraq.

Sputnik V, notably, is one of the three coronavirus vaccines registered by India's regulatory authorities.

The vaccine has been registered in India under the emergency use authorization procedure based on results of clinical trials in Russia as well as positive data of additional Phase III local clinical trials in India conducted in partnership with Dr Reddy's Laboratories.

In India, the RDIF has reached agreements with the pharmaceutical companies like Gland Pharma, Hetero Biopharma, Panacea Biotec, Stelis Biopharma and Virchow Biotech.