The meeting took place at the Biocad Research and Production Centre during the Prime Minister’s working trip to St Petersburg.
Remarks by Mikhail Mishustin
Excerpts from the transcript:
Good afternoon, colleagues.
Mikhail Mishustin meets with manufacturers of COVID-19 vaccines
We meet regularly to monitor all the issues related to COVID-19 vaccine rollout. The Sputnik V vaccine is now available in all regions, with over 310,000 doses shipped so far. We have analysed the regions’ readiness to receive, store and distribute the vaccine. The necessary local infrastructure has been mostly streamlined. Over 1,200 medical organisations have been designated for administering the vaccine.
Please, remain on top of the situation along the entire chain, including production, delivery, storage and vaccination points, all the more so as the pace of vaccine production is picking up. We estimate that medical institutions will receive almost 6.5 million doses in January-February, which is a good number. In any case, our plans are being overfulfilled, which is great news.
Today, we toured two production sites for making domestic medications, including those for helping people with cancer and the circulatory system diseases. We saw how the production of our first COVID-19 vaccine – Sputnik V – is organised. It is now being supplied to all regions of the country in order to protect the life and health of our people. The Sputnik V vaccine production is a process that is unmatched anywhere in the world. Today it is being produced at four sites. The fifth is in the process of registration. The number of these sites will expand. I’m confident this will help increase the output.
The production of our second vaccine, EpiVacCorona, is also up. More than 7,000 doses have been delivered to the regions, and over 14,000 will be delivered by the end of the year. The manufacturer says that medical organisations will have received over 50,000 doses by February.
It is important to streamline the supply chain for both vaccines. The Federal Distribution Centre is already operational. I want the involved departments to keep in mind that its second phase must be launched without delay regardless of the upcoming holidays. This will make it possible to store many more vaccine doses. Once again, vaccination should be picking up pace and be administered on holidays, too, in compliance with applicable requirements.
Russian-made vaccines are in demand in other countries as well. It is important to continue to transfer domestic technology to foreign production sites. It is not enough to share competencies. We need to get feedback from our foreign colleagues and engage in corresponding collaborations. This work is already underway online. We need to join our efforts and to scale up the production. Today, we will discuss progress in this area.
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