Russia began vaccination against Covid-19 of over 400,000 armed forces personnel last week. At the end of next week, vaccination of the general population will begin, starting with doctors and teachers, Sputnik International reports today. The vaccine being used initially is the “Sputnik V” vaccine developed by Russia’s Gamaleya Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology, which is completing its Phase 3 clinical trials. Vaccination is voluntary and free of charge.
The decision to speed up the timetable was requested by President Vladimir Putin personally. Sputnik reports that he told Deputy Prime Minister of Russia for Social Policy Tatiana Golikova, not to report to him next week, but to begin the mass vaccinations and get to work on it as soon as possible. “I know that we have manufactured or will have manufactured more than 2 million doses of the Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine in the next few days…. This allows us to start large-scale vaccination, if not a mass one, and of course, as we had agreed, it would concern the two at-risk groups first of all, doctors and teachers,” Putin said. “If you think that we are ready for this step, I would ask you to organize it so that we will start mass vaccinations by the end of the next week.” She confirmed that this is possible.
