India’s drug regulator has confirmed the approval of a third coronavirus vaccine – Russia’s Sputnik V – as the country battles a deadly wave of the pandemic that saw it logged over 161,000 new infections on Tuesday.

Russia’s sovereign wealth fund RDIF said India’s drug controller general had approved Sputnik V’s use.

“India is the most populated country to register the Russian vaccine. Total population of 60 countries where Sputnik V is approved for use is three billion people or about 40 per cent of the global population,” the statement said.

On Monday, sources had said an expert panel set by the drugs regulator had recommended granting emergency use approval to Sputnik V, developed by Moscow’s Gamaleya Institute.

Five pharmaceutical companies would manufacture sputnik V and produce 850 million doses annually, RDIF said.

Limited doses were going to be made available by the end of April, RDIF chief executive Kirill Dmitriev told broadcaster NDTV.

India has so far used two vaccines, one developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca and the other by the domestic firm Bharat Biotech for its mass immunisation programme.

India has administered over 108 million doses to its population of 1.3 billion people.

Sputnik V has the highest efficacy – 91.6 per cent among the vaccines cleared in India. 

(dpa/NAN)