"We are expecting that our country will have COVID vaccine by the early next year," Vardhan said in a statement to the Parliament.
On Wednesday, the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) confirmed reaching an agreement to deliver 100 million doses of the Russian COVID-19 vaccine Sputnik V to India, specifying that the deal was reached with India's Dr. Reddy's.
Deliveries could start in late 2020, the RDIF added. A request for approval for the Phase 3 trials in India "will be filed shortly" to India's drug regulator, a RDIF spokesman told reporters.
In August, Russia registered the world’s first COVID-19 vaccine, developed by the Gamaleya Scientific Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology.
India comes second in terms of the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases, following the United States, having a total of over 5.12 million cases. Earlier this day, India confirmed 97,894 new cases of the coronavirus over the past 24 hours marking the largest daily increase in any country since the beginning of the outbreak.
