MOSCOW, March 29. /TASS/. The Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) and Shenzhen Yuanxing Gene-tech have agreed to produce over 60 mln doses of Sputnik V vaccine in China, the fund said on Monday.

"Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF, Russia’s sovereign wealth fund), and Shenzhen Yuanxing Gene-tech Co.,Ltd., one of the leading bio-technological companies in China, have agreed to cooperate on production of over 60 million doses of the world’s first registered vaccine against the novel coronavirus infection Sputnik V in the country. This amount of the vaccine will be sufficient to vaccinate over 30 million people. The commercial production is due to start in May 2021," the statement said.

"Sputnik V is one of the best vaccines against coronavirus in the world. It is already approved for use in over 50 countries. Cooperation with Shenzhen Yuanxing Gene-tech will enable us to produce Sputnik V in China, thus increasing the capacities to provide additional amounts as we see rising demand for the Russian vaccine globally," CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund Kirill Dmitriev commented on the announcement.

Currently, Sputnik V has been registered in 57 countries with a total population of over 1.5 bln people. The efficacy of Sputnik V is 91.6%. It was confirmed by the data published in the Lancet, one of the world's oldest and most respected medical journals.

The vaccine is based on a proven and well-studied platform of human adenoviral vectors and uses two different vectors for the two shots in a course of vaccination, providing immunity with a longer duration than vaccines using the same delivery mechanism for both shots, the fund noted.