India will receive a first batch of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine against COVID-19 on May 1, the head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), Kirill Dmitriev, told Reuters on Monday. He did not say how many vaccines would be in the first batch or where they would be made.
India, in the grip of a second wave of the pandemic, is struggling to tackle surging coronavirus infections that are overwhelming hospitals, and countries like Britain, Germany and the United States have pledged to send urgent medical aid.
“The first doses will be delivered on May 1,” Dmitriev said, adding he hoped Russian supplies would help India navigate its way out of the pandemic in time.
Russia’s RDIF sovereign wealth fund, which is marketing Sputnik V globally, has already signed agreements with five leading Indian manufacturers for over 850 million doses of the vaccine a year.
The RDIF has said it expects production of the vaccine in India to reach 50 million doses a month by the summer and to rise further.
The World Health Organization chief described the situation in the world’s second-most populous country as “beyond heartbreaking” as the WHO was planning to provide extra staff and supplies including oxygen concentrator devices.
Russian pharmaceutical firm Pharmasyntez said earlier on Monday that it was ready to ship up to 1 million packs of the remdesivir antiviral drug to India by end-May, once it has received the approval of Russia’s government.
Russia’s Sputnik V, the world’s first vaccine registered against the coronavirus disease (Covid-19), has been recommended for emergency use by experts in India, which is seeing a worrying spike in cases linked to the viral infection.
Sputnik V, which shares its name with the world’s first artificial satellite made by Russia, is an adenovirus-based vaccine (more on this later) that is being used by Moscow for mass vaccination. Russian President Vladmir Putin has said one of his daughters had already had two doses of the vaccine. It has also been approved in 59 countries with a total population of over 1.5 billion people.
The vaccine, also known as Gam-Covid-Vac, is a combination of two different adenoviruses (Ad26 and Ad5). The adenoviruses — viruses that cause common cold — are combined with the SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes Covid-19) spike protein, which prompts the body to make an immune response to it, according to The BMJ paper cited above. Using the same adenovirus for the two doses could lead to the body developing an immune response against the vector and destroying it when the second dose is administered. Two different vectors reduce the chance of this, it said.
A report in the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFERL), a US-funded publication, explained this. “Sputnik V is a viral-vector vaccine. That means that it uses a modified version of a different virus as a tool to transport genetic material to a cell. Sputnik V was developed using adenoviruses, which normally causes respiratory infections, but other viruses (including the influenza or measles virus) have also been used in other viral-vector therapies,” it said.
Dr Reddy’s Laboratories, which has received approval from the Indian drug regulator for restricted emergency use of COVID-19 vaccineSputnik V, on Tuesday said it expects the first lot of stock from Russian Direct Investment Fund by May end. In September 2020, Dr Reddys and RDIF entered into a partnership to conduct clinical trials of SputnikV, developed by the Gamaleya National Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology, and the rights for distribution of the first 100 million doses in India.
Later, it was enhanced to 125 million. “We are targeting to have the first batches imported by Q1, and are trying our best to have them by end-May,” a Dr. Reddy’s spokesperson told.
(With agency inputs)
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