According to the spokesperson, during the UN Security Council meeting on February 17, the secretary general proposed to create a special working group within the G20 framework to prepare and implement a global-scale vaccination initiative against the coronavirus disease. The initiative is aimed at providing all countries with equal access to coronavirus vaccines.
"We are ready for in-depth work on the UN secretary general's initiative within the G20 and expect to receive concrete proposals on that plan," Zakharova said at a briefing.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Russia has led the world in the race to develop a vaccine, creating three different jabs: Sputnik V, developed by Moscow’s Gamaleya Institute, EpiVacCorona by the Siberian research centre Vector, and the Chumakov Research Institute's CoviVac.
In February, peer-reviewed medical journal The Lancet published an interim analysis from Phase 3 clinical trial of Sputnik V, showing its 91.6-percent efficacy against symptomatic COVID-19. The vaccine has already been approved in more than 35 countries, including Belarus, Serbia, Hungary, San Marino, Argentina, Bolivia, Mexico, Nicaragua, Algeria, Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates, among others.