India, where a difficult situation with coronavirus infection has developed, will receive the Russian Sputnik V vaccine. Kirill Dmitriev, head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), said this in an interview with CNN.
“Of course, the first doses will arrive on May 1,” he said, answering a question about the provision of a Russian vaccine to India.
On April 12, India approved the use of the Sputnik V vaccine.
On April 25, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the country was rocked by a “coronavirus storm”, noting that people in New Delhi were dying from COVID-19 every four minutes for four consecutive days.
On April 26, the press secretary of the President of Russia Dmitry Peskov said that the Russian Federation is concerned about the situation with the coronavirus in India. He did not rule out the holding of operational contacts between the leadership of Russia and India in the coming days.
On April 24, India recorded an anti-record for the number of people who fell ill per day – it reached 346 786 new patients.
The increase in the number of cases in the country has continued since mid-February. In a few weeks, the number of patients increased to 2.5 million. The state of Maharashtra suffered the most from COVID-19: 66.8 thousand cases were recorded there per day.
On the same day, a new type of coronavirus with a double mutation was identified in the country.
India has the second largest number of cases of COVID-19 in the world.
The Russian drug “Sputnik V” is one of the three world vaccines against coronavirus in terms of the number of approvals received by state regulators. The drug was developed by specialists from the Gamaleya Center. It was registered in August 2020. It became the first vaccine against this virus in Russia and in the world.