The Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDFI) has announced the signing of a contract with a Turkish company for the production of the Sputnik V vaccine developed against coronavirus.
The RDFI said on Saturday that the process of transferring the technology needed for the production of the vaccine to Turkey had begun, as reported by Russia's Interfax Agency.
RDIF, which is responsible for marketing the Sputnik V vaccine outside the country, had previously reached agreements with manufacturers in South Korea, China, India, Brazil, Belarus and Kazakhstan.
On the other hand, Kirill DMITRIEV, the head of the RDIF said last week that an application to the European Union for approval of the Sputnik v vaccine ha d been planned in February. He also noted that the vaccine's inspection results would be announced soon.
A short while ago, Russian President Vladimir Putin had announced that they would begin mass coronavirus vaccination across the country. Putin had suggested that the Sputnik V vaccine, which Russia developed and would be made available for Russian citizens free of charrge, was the best vaccine developed against the virus.
Russia's Health Ministry said it expected the World Health Organization (who) to make its decision on the Sputnik v coronavirus vaccine in the first half of this year. “Expert consultations on the analysis of the dossier will be held this January, " the Russian Ministry of Health said in a statement to Russian press. “We expect a WHO decision in the first half of 2021” the statement said.
The national wealth fund (RDIF) and the Gamaleya Research Institute, which developed the Sputnik v coronavirus vaccine had applied to the WHO in December last year for approval of the vaccine's emergency use. The WHO had previously approved emergency use of the vaccine, which is produced by Pfizer and BioNTech companies.
Turkey on the other hand has preferred to use Coronavac, the Chinese vaccine as a first step and started to vaccine its citizens only a few days ago, health-workers to be in the first place, followed by elderly people.
