The Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF, Russia's sovereign wealth fund) and Panacea Biotec, has announced the supply of the 1st shipment out of 1 million doses of the second component (human adenovirus serotype 5) of the Russian Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine manufactured by Panacea Biotec for sale in India.

This is the first batch of the second component produced and supplied by the company in India. Doses of the second component of Sputnik V have been manufactured at Panacea Biotec's state of the art vaccine manufacturing facility in Himachal Pradesh. The company received the necessary clearance from Central Drug Laboratories (CDL), Kasauli on August 31, 2021.

Full-scale production of Sputnik V started at Panacea Biotec's facilities this summer. Facilities comply with GMP standards and are prequalified by WHO.

The batch will be distributed in India through a partner of RDIF and Panacea Biotec - Dr. Reddy's Laboratories.

To date, Sputnik V has been authorized in 70 countries with a total population of over 4 billion people.

Dr. Rajesh Jain, Managing Director of Panacea Biotec, said: "Panacea Biotec is pleased to have successfully produced and dispatched the first batch of Component II (Ad5) of Sputnik V vaccine. More batches are currently under production at our manufacturing facility in Himachal Pradesh."

Sputnik V has many key advantages:

The efficacy of Sputnik V is 97.6% based on the analysis of data on the coronavirus infection rate among those in Russia vaccinated with both components of Sputnik V from December 5, 2020 to March 31, 2021. The vaccine is based on a proven and well-studied platform of human adenoviral vectors, which cause the common cold and have been around for thousands of years. Third Sputnik V has pioneered the use of heterogeneous boosting (two different vectors for the two shots in a course of vaccination among Covid vaccines). This approach provides for immunity with a longer duration than vaccines using the same delivery mechanism for both shots. Finally, the safety, efficacy and lack of negative long-term effects of adenoviral vaccines have been proven by more than 250 clinical studies over two decades. There are no strong allergies caused by Sputnik