Indian pharmaceutical company Shilpa Medicare Limited entered into an agreement with Dr. Reddy's Laboratories on the production and supply of the Russian-developed Sputnik V vaccine, the company reported on Monday in a press release, Trend reports with reference to TASS.
According to the statement, the company, through its subsidiary Shilpa Biologicals Private Limited (SBPL), has entered into a final three-year agreement with Dr. Reddy's Laboratories Limited for the production and supply of Sputnik V vaccine from its integrated biological research and development center in Dharwad, Karnataka.
It was noted that production of the Sputnik V two-component vaccine is planned to be 50 mln doses within the first 12 months from the date of commercialization - that is 50 mln of the first component and 50 mln of the second component.
The document also said that in accordance with the agreement, SBPL will be responsible for the production of the vaccine, while Dr. Reddy's will be responsible for the distribution and marketing of the vaccine in its sales territories.
The companies are also exploring the possibility of producing a single-component vaccine Sputnik Light in the near future, the press release said.
Two batches of the Russian Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine have already been delivered to India on May 1 and May 16 by the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), which oversees this project. Sputnik V is the third vaccine to be used in the country. Previously, two drugs were used in vaccination in India: Covishield, developed by the British-Swedish company AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford, and Covaxin by the Indian company Bharat Biotech.
The Sputnik V vaccine was approved in India on April 12, 2021, as part of the fast track registration process.
Russian-made Sputnik V is currently registered in 65 countries with a total population of over 3.2 bln people. Sputnik V ranks second in the world in terms of the number of approvals received by government regulators.
In late December 2019, Chinese officials informed the World Health Organization (WHO) about the outbreak of a previously unknown pneumonia in the city of Wuhan, in central China. Since then, cases of the novel coronavirus - named COVID-19 by the WHO - have been reported in every corner of the globe, including Russia. On March 11, 2020, the WHO declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic.