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As India has come across an unusual covid surge in cases, Russia’s sputnik V has become India’s 3rd vaccine, now approved by India’s drug controller.

Covid-19 vaccine: the Drugs controller general of India( DCGI) has now approved the emergency use of Russia’s sputnik V corona vaccine.

During the unpredictable covid surge, India has got its 3rd corona vaccine to be approved by the drug regulator.

However, the two familiar vaccines Covidshield(Manufactured by Serum Institute of India) and Covaxin( Manufactured by Bharat biotech) were declared in January.

Related article| Maharashtra lockdown is not decided yet: Uddhav Thackeray 

India has become the 60th country to approve the two-dose vaccine, said the Russian direct investment Fund (RDIF) in a statement.

“Sputnik V ranks second among coronavirus vaccines globally in terms of the number of approvals issued by government regulators,” the statement says.

Manufactured by Dr. Reddy’s, has- 91.6% effectiveness, which is the highest after Moderna and Pfizer. It was first applied by Dr. reddy’s on February 19, for the emergency use of the vaccine amid phase 3 of clinical trials in India.

As of Monday, it was put forward for use by the Subject Expert Committee (SEC) of the Central Drugs Standard Control Organization.

Also read: covid-19 vaccines available in the USA 

Nonetheless, India inaugurated the world’s largest immunization drive on January 16, and from then, 10 crores vaccine doses have been administered as yet. Even so, numerous countries are facing a fresh wave of the covid infection and somehow are back in the line with the vaccine stock, as per the state government.
Unfortunately, India has observed 1.36 crore covid-19 infections as yet and has become the second country with the highest spread of infection after the USA.

Russia’s sputnik V covid vaccine works on the same principle, that is by delivering a weakened covid pathogen to initiate the immune response. Thus, help in the production of antibodies of the susceptible individual.

Last September, dr. reddy’s partnered with the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) to conduct the trials. As of now, the trials of sputnik V are on around 1,600 people age between 18-99 in India.

Kirill Dmitriev, CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, said “India is a vaccine-manufacturing hub and our strategic partner for the production of Sputnik V. RDIF has created partnerships with several India’s leading pharmaceutical companies for the production of Sputnik V which will provide for both vaccination of the population in India and global distribution of the Russian vaccine. Over 850 million doses of Sputnik V are going to be produced in India annually sufficient to vaccinate more than 425 million people around the world,”