Russian begins mass vaccination programme

A medic receives Russia's Sputnik V vaccine shot against the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Tver, Russia on October 12, 2020 [File: Tatyana Makeyeva/Reuters]. Russia has begun its official mass vaccination programme against COVID-19, using the country’s Sputnik V vaccine. Named after the Soviet satellite that triggered the space race, Sputnik V has been used to inoculate 200,000 people considered at risk across Russia – home to 145 million people – to date. It was first registered for emergency use in August, making Russia the first country in the world to approve a vaccine for widespread public use. The vaccine was developed by the state-run Gamaleya Institute and is 91.4 percent effective, based on interim late-stage trial results. However, phase three, a large trial involving thousands of people, to prove the vaccine protects people, is yet to be completed. Studies are ongoing in Russia, Belarus, the United Arab Emirates, Venezuela and India. More than 50 countries have made requests for more than 1.2 billion doses of Sputnik V, said RDIF, which funded the vaccine. The vaccine will be sold to the international market at less than $10 per dose. By comparison, Pfizer-BioNTech’s and Moderna’s two-dose vaccines cost about $20 and $33 per dose respectively, while the Oxford-AstraZeneca product is available at a much cheaper price of about $4 per jab. Source: Aljazeera