Russia’s Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) and Indian pharmaceutical company Hetero have agreed to produce over 100 million doses per year in India of the Sputnik V vaccine against Covid-19, according to a statement release by Sputnik Vaccines on its website on Friday. Hetero and the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), which has been backing the vaccine and marketing it globally, plan to start production of Sputnik V in India at the beginning of 2021, the statement said.
Currently there are over 200 different COVID-19 vaccines under development around the world. Sputnik V is the world’s first registered vaccine based on a well-studied human adenoviral vector-based platform. It currently ranks among top-10 candidate vaccines approaching the end of clinical trials and the start of mass production on the World Health Organization’s (WHO) list. The ongoing Sputnik V post-registration clinical trial in Russia involves 40,000 volunteers.
Clinical trials of Sputnik V have been announced in the UAE, India, Venezuela and Belarus. Phase II-III trials are ongoing in India, the statement said. The parties intend to start the production of Sputnik V in the beginning of 2021.
Sputnik claims that the uniqueness of the vaccine lies in the use of two different vectors based on the human adenovirus, which allows for a stronger and longer-term immune response as compared to vaccines using one and the same vector for two doses. So, preliminary data on volunteers on the 42nd day after the first dose (equivalent to 21 days after the second dose), when they have already formed a stable immune response, indicates the efficacy rate of the vaccine is above 95%.
Aayush Pal 
Shobhil Shrivastava 
Dr. Niranjan B Poojar