India has cleared the use of Russia's Covid vaccine Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine, said the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) said on Monday.
Sputnik V has been cleared for emergency use by India's drug regulator - the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI).
The Russian vaccine becomes the third COVID-19 vaccine by the drug regulator, along with the Serum Institute's Covishield and Bharat Biotech's Covaxin.
The decision comes as India is seeing an unprecedented surge in cases in recent weeks.
In a statement, RDIF said that India has become the 60th country to approve the two-dose vaccine. The RDIF has reached agreements with five pharmaceutical firms in the country - Gland Pharma, Hetero Biopharma, Panacea Biotec, Stelis Biopharma, Virchow Biotech - aimed at production of more than 850 million doses per year. But limited doses are likely to be manufactured by April-end.
Sputnik V ranks second among coronavirus vaccines globally in terms of the number of approvals issued by government regulators, the statement said.
According to Worldometer's Tuesday statistics, 1,60,694 people have been infected and 880 people died in India in the last 24 hours.
