By the end of May, India will get 3 million doses of Sputnik-V, production in India from August

New Delhi, May 22, 2021, Saturday

Emphasis is being placed on vaccination of people to combat the corona virus and the government has approved Russia's Sputnik V vaccine to address the shortage of corona vaccine in the country.

India's Ambassador to Russia D Bala Venkatesh Verma said that the production of Sputnik will start in India from August. By the end of May, India will have a supply of 30 lakh doses of the vaccine, which is expected to increase to 50 lakh by June. India initially plans to produce 850 million doses of the vaccine.

Meanwhile, the Russian company, which manufactures Russian vaccines, has entered into an agreement with Dr. Reddy's for production in India and two lakh doses have been supplied to India. The Sputnik V vaccine has been approved for import but is not yet widely available in the country. The vaccine is priced at around Rs 1,000 with a single dose of GST. The first consignment of the vaccine from Russia arrived in India on May 1.

However, Russia hopes that the vaccine will be widely available in the market once it starts production in India. Russia has also approved the transfer of technology for vaccine production in India, which will start production in India from August.

Apart from Sputnik, two other corona vaccines, Covishield and Covacin, are currently available in India.