NEW DELHI, April 6./TASS/. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Tuesday that the production of an Indian coronavirus vaccine in Russia was possible.

"I don’t rule out that further cooperation on that track will embrace the production of an [Indian] vaccine on Russian soil," the top diplomat stated at a news conference after talks with his Indian counterpart Subrahmanyam Jaishankar. "I suppose that the specialists will have to discuss this, proceeding from the maximum efficiency of such cooperation," Lavrov added.

He also noted that the Russian Direct Investment Fund was in the process of inking contracts with several Indian contractors to manufacture the Russian-made coronavirus vaccine Sputnik V in India. According to him, the production numbers are estimated at 700-750 million doses.

Right now, India is producing two vaccines - Covishield (this is the local name of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine) and Covaxin from India’s Bharat Biotech company. Besides, about 20 vaccines are being looked at for use, and this includes Russia’s Sputnik V.

Russia was the first in the world to register an anti-coronavirus vaccine on August 11, 2020. The jab, developed by the Russian Health Ministry’s Gamaleya National Research Center for Epidemiology and Microbiology, was dubbed Sputnik V. It is a vector vaccine based on the human adenovirus.

In early February 2020, The Lancet, a world-acclaimed medical journal, published the results of the third phase of Sputnik V’s clinical tests. The jab has shown itself to be among the world’s safest and most efficient. Thus, its efficacy is estimated at 91.6%. Ninety-eight percent of volunteers developed antibodies to the coronavirus.