The Russian Sovereign Fund (RDIF) announced Friday, November 27, that it had reached an agreement with the Indian pharmaceutical group Hetero for the production of more than 100 million annual doses of the Russian vaccine against the coronavirus, Sputnik V.
Read also: Covid-19: Russia claims 92% effectiveness for its vaccine
"
Hetero, one of India's leading generic manufacturers, has agreed to produce in India more than 100 million doses per year
" of Sputnik V, RDIF, which has funded the development of the vaccine, said in a statement, adding that production will have to start "
early 2021
".
According to the statement, clinical trials of the vaccine in phase II and III are underway in India.
"
Thanks to our cooperation with Hetero, we will be able to significantly increase the production capacity and provide the Indian population with an effective solution in this difficult period of the pandemic
", commented the head of the fund, Kirill Dmitriev, quoted in the press release.
The RDIF specifies that "
requests
" for more than 1.2 billion doses of the Sputnik V vaccine have been made by "
more than 50 countries
".
In addition to India, the vaccine must be produced in particular in Brazil, China or South Korea, according to the same source.
On Tuesday, Russia claimed that Sputnik V, developed by the Gamaleïa research center in Moscow, was 95% effective, a result equivalent to vaccines developed by the Pfizer / BioNTech alliance and the American company Moderna.
"
The price of a dose of Sputnik V for the international market will be less than $ 10
," said the Russian Sovereign Fund.
The Sputnik V vaccine is currently in phase 3 of double-blind randomized clinical trials - when neither the patient nor the doctor know if it is a placebo - in 40,000 volunteers.
International competition is raging to develop a vaccine for the virus responsible for the pandemic which has paralyzed entire countries since the beginning of the year.
Russia is determined to take the lead and had announced in August, even before large-scale clinical trials, the effectiveness of Sputnik V, raising doubts within the international scientific community.
Read also: Coronavirus: why the Russian vaccine "Sputnik V" is not leading the planetary race
