Dmitry Peskov, press secretary of the Russian President, called the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) a huge success that the COVID-19 vaccine is being used in 71 countries.
Peskov noted that the pharmaceutical market is extremely aggressive. According to him, there is a huge level of competition, as companies are forced to compete with global corporations, the budget of which is comparable to the budget of most countries in the world.
“Get Pfizer, AstraZeneca, and so on. These companies are not always friendly towards their competitors. The fact that RDIF carried our vaccine through all these obstacles, 70-odd countries of the world have approved this vaccine and are already using it at home, is a huge success”, Peskov said in an interview with the Russia-24 TV channel, writes TASS.
Earlier, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) Tedros Ghebreyesus said that the omicron strain of coronavirus infection is spreading much faster than other variants of the virus. Russian Health Minister Mikhail Murashko stressed that the Sputnik V vaccine has good neutralizing activity against the new omicron strain.
At present, Sputnik V, developed by scientists from the Gamaleya Research Center for Electrochemistry, is approved in 71 countries with a total population of about four billion people, which is over 50% of the world’s population. The vaccine is based on an adenoviral platform that provides high efficacy and safety.