A consignment of Russia’s Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine, said to be the first such one for Tamil Nadu, arrived here by a private airline from Hyderabad on Tuesday. The processing of the shipment at the Chennai airport was completed quickly and it was handed over to a transport agency, airportsources said.

It was taken to a private laboratory at Periyapanicheri in Chennai by vehicle. Later, one box of vaccines was disptached to Coimbatore, sources said.

Scheduled to be rolled out by mid-June, the Sputnik V vaccine was accorded emergency use authorisation by the Drugs Controller General of India and it joins Covishield and the indigenous Covaxin in the battle against COVID-19. The first dose of the imported vaccine was administered in Hyderabad last month.

The vaccine, developed by Russia’s Gamaleya National Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology, is said to be 91.6 per cent efficacious - the highest among COVID vaccines available in India..

Tamil Nadu Receives First Consignment of Sputnik V Vaccine

The processing of the shipment at the Chennai airport was completed quickly and it was handed over to a transport agency, airport sources said.