Russian President Vladimir told the leaders of the East Asia Summit yesterday that Russia now has two coronavirus vaccines which have been officially registered, Sputnik V (already being used in Russia), and EpiVacCorona (which moved into clinical trial in October), and a third vaccine is coming up. “Dozens of countries have already expressed their interest in working together to organize the supplies and joint manufacturing of these vaccines. We strongly believe that citizens of all countries must have free access to vaccination.”
This kind of close cooperation between nations is needed to counter the coronavirus pandemic, which is “the gravest crisis faced by our region and all humankind,” he specified. Putin pointed to the necessity of cooperation within the Asia-Pacific Region in fighting the pandemic, which with over 20 million coronavirus cases has almost half (43.7%) of all the world’s cases. He cited as one example of joint work regionally fostered by Russia, a command-staff exercise on fighting the pandemic hosted in May by the ASEAN Center of Military Medicine, which Russia had helped set up.
