Moscow: Russian President Vladimir Putin makes an announcement to start widespread vaccinations next week, adding that the country had produced close to 2 million doses of its Sputnik V vaccine. This announcement came the same day Britain approved the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for a rollout starting next week.
Russia stated that interim test results showed the Sputnik V vaccine was 95 percent effective, a higher efficacy than its international competitors, last week. Sputnik V was named after the Soviet-era satellite is in its third and final stage of clinical trials involving some 40,000 volunteers. Putin said, "I would ask you to organise the work so that by the end of next week we will have started this large-scale vaccination," speaking in a video conference call with Deputy Prime Minister Tatiana Golikova, who is leading the coronavirus task force. The president also recorded that teachers and medics will be the first to receive. The vaccine uses two different human adenovirus vectors and is inflicted in two doses with a 21-day gap. The vaccine will be free to all Russian citizens and vaccination will be voluntary.
Russia's defence ministry announced that a mass vaccination campaign has been rolled out in the army last week, aiming to vaccinate over 400,000 servicemen, some 80,000 of them by the end of the year. Russia has the fourth-highest virus caseload in the world, with a total of 2.3 million registered cases and over 41,000 fatalities.
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