The Russian drug Sputnik V ranked second among vaccines against coronavirus infection in terms of the number of countries that approved it.

This was reported on the vaccine's official Twitter account. 

Sputnik V is now the second most popular COVID-19 vaccine in the world in terms of the number of regulatory approvals.

Thanks for the vote of confidence! "

- the message says.

As follows from the table published in the account, "Sputnik V", approved in 45 countries around the world, overtook the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine, whose use is now allowed in 43 countries.

In the first place at the moment is the vaccine of the British-Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, approved in 49 countries.

The Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) reported earlier that Iraq became the 45th country where the drug developed in the Russian Federation was registered.

The vaccine registration was carried out under an accelerated procedure.

Let's remind, developed by NITsEM them.

Gamalei, Sputnik V became the world's first registered vaccine against COVID-19.

It is a two-component vector vaccine based on human adenovirus, which contains an insert in its genome that encodes a fragment of the SARS-CoV-2 S-protein and induces an immune response in the body.

Each person is vaccinated in two stages: the second injection is given 21 days after the first injection.

The results of the third phase of the clinical study "Sputnik V", published in the authoritative medical journal The Lancet, confirmed the effectiveness of the vaccine at 91.6%, as well as its ability to completely protect a person from a severe form of coronavirus disease.

In addition, the day before, the European Medicines Agency began a consistent examination of the registration dossier of the Russian vaccine.

As noted by the general director of the RDIF, Kirill Dmitriev, if approved by Sputnik V, 50 million residents of the EU countries can be provided from June 2021, which will make it possible to contribute to saving millions of lives throughout Europe.

“The vaccine partnership should be above politics, and cooperation with EMA is an excellent example, which confirms that only joining forces can defeat the pandemic,” Dmitriev emphasized.

On March 1, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko said that the number of countries showing interest in the Russian drug is growing every day.

According to him, some EU states express their readiness to limit themselves to national certification of the drug.

“Many of them assume that real cooperation can be established when our drug is certified (by the European Medicines Agency -

RT

), but some indicate their readiness to go through national certification, which will be enough for the use of our vaccines in the respective countries. "- quoted by Grushko RIA Novosti.

Meanwhile, Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova said that at the moment about 2.5 million Russians have already received two components of the coronavirus vaccine.

Approximately 5 million citizens have passed the first stage of vaccination.

"To date, the production volume amounted to 13.9 million sets of vaccine doses ... Of this volume, 7.9 million dose sets are available for use," TASS quotes her as saying.

  • Reuters

  • © Tatyana Makeyeva

Golikova clarified that we are talking mainly about the Sputnik V vaccine, but she also recalled that in February, the production of Epivakkorona, the drug of the state scientific center of virology and biotechnology Vector, began to be scaled up, the volume of production of which is planned to be increased in March.

In turn, the general director of "Vector" Rinat Maksyutov said that "Epivakkorona" will be available to Russians for mass vaccination in the second half of March.

He told about this on the air of the Vesti program on the Russia-1 TV channel.

Maksyutov recalled that the vaccine "does not overextend the immune system and forms only key antibodies, without unnecessary antibodies that do not provide protection."

The day before, Russian President Vladimir Putin, who met with participants in the All-Russian action of mutual assistance "We are Together," noted the quality of vaccines developed by Russian scientists and said that, according to experts, it would be impossible to cope with the epidemic without them. 

“Indeed, there is something to be proud of.

Our vaccine (Sputnik V) and vaccines (two other drugs registered in the Russian Federation) are the safest and most effective in the world, ”the president said.