Hyderabad: A flight with the first batch of Sputnik V vaccines from Russia landed in Hyderabad, Telangana, on Saturday.
Last month, the Drug Administration General (DCGI) granted permission for dr. Reddy’s laboratories can import the Russian vaccine to India for emergency use.
The rollout of the Russian vaccine is expected to boost India’s third phase of the vaccination field, which began today amid a record rise in COVID-19 incidents.
India reports more than 4 lakh new for the first time COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours. A total of 4,01,993 fresh COVID-19 cases have been recorded in the past 24 hours, taking the cumulative count of cases to 1,91,64,969, the Union’s Ministry of Health reported on Saturday.
Sputnik V is the third vaccine to give India the go-ahead to ‘Covishield’, developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca and ‘Covaxin’, the native vaccine manufactured by Bharat Biotech. Covishield is manufactured by the Serum Institute of India.
The Indian envoy to Russia, Bala Venkatesh Varma, said earlier that India expects between 150,000 and 200,000 ready-made vaccines to be available soon in early May.
Diplomatic sources told ANI that India would get a large amount of vaccines in the first part and that the stock would continue in installments. India expects 5 million bottles of Sputnik vaccines by next month.
Source: The Siasat Daily