Hyderabad: RDIF, Hetero ink pact to produce 100 m doses of Sputnik vaccine

Hyderabad: The Russian Direct Investment Fund, Russia's sovereign wealth fund, and city-based pharma group Hetero have agreed to produce over 100 million doses per year of the world's first registered Covid-19 vaccine Sputnik V, Hetero said on Friday.

The parties intend to start the production of Sputnik V in the beginning of 2021, through Hetero's biologics arm Hetero Biopharma, it said in a press release.

The Gamaleya Center in Russia and RDIF announced on November 24 positive results obtained during the second interim data analysis of the largest double-blind, randomised, placebo-controlled Phase III

clinical trials in Russia's history involving 40,000 volunteers.

Currently Phase III clinical trials are approved and are ongoing in Belarus, the UAE, Venezuela and other countries, as well as Phase II-III in India and requests for more than 1.2 billion doses of Sputnik V vaccine came from more than 50 countries.

Kirill Dmitriev, CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, said "We are delighted to announce the agreement between RDIF and Hetero that will pave the way to production of the safe and highly effective Sputnik V vaccine on Indian soil.