MOSCOW, July 3. /TASS/. Asian countries have expressed an interest in Russian-procuced drugs and vaccines against COVID-19, a disease caused by the novel coronavirus, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Igor Morgulov said in an open interview with TASS First Deputy Director General Mikhail Gusman on Thursday.
He noted that the Russian consumer rights watchdog actively cooperates with Asian states in bilateral and multilateral formats, namely within the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), BRICS, East Asia Summit and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). "We will surely carry on this work," the senior diplomat said. "Asian partners have expressed a great deal of interest in the Russian experience of countering the pandemic, first and foremost in the developments related to the production of drugs aimed to combat this infection. And of course, a great deal of interest is expressed in the prospects of producing a vaccine against COVID-19."
Morgulov added that Russia continues to aid many Asian states, sending medical equipment, test systems, means of individual protection. "Our mobile labs, for example, have been involved in the research of the coronavirus in the remote areas of Mongolia. We have similar labs based on the Russian-Vietnamese tropical center," the diplomat said.
In late December 2019, Chinese officials notified 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. On March 11, 2020, the WHO declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic.