Putin noted that teachers and doctors will be the first to receive the jab (Archive)
Moscow, Russia:
Russian President Vladimir Putin told health officials on Wednesday to begin widespread vaccination next week, adding that the country had produced about 2 million doses of its Sputnik V vaccine.
The announcement came on the same day that Britain approved the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for launch starting next week.
Last week, Russia announced that interim test results showed the Sputnik V vaccine to be 95 percent effective, a higher efficacy than its international competitors.
Named after the Soviet-era satellite, Sputnik V is in its third and final stage of clinical trials involving some 40,000 volunteers.
“I would ask them to organize the work so that by the end of next week we have started this large-scale vaccination,” Putin said, speaking in a video conference with Deputy Prime Minister Tatiana Golikova, who is leading the coronavirus task. strength.
The president noted that teachers and doctors will be the first to receive the blow.
“More than 2 million doses have been or will be produced in the coming days,” Putin added.
The Sputnik V vaccine uses two different human adenovirus vectors and is administered in two doses 21 days apart.
The vaccine will be free for all Russian citizens and vaccination will be voluntary.
Last week, the Russian Defense Ministry announced that a massive vaccination campaign had been launched in the army, with the aim of inoculating more than 400,000 military personnel, some 80,000 of them by the end of the year.
Russia has the fourth highest number of virus cases in the world, with a total of 2.3 million registered cases and more than 41,000 deaths.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)
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