HANOI, February 26. /TASS/. The Vietnamese Ministry of Health has authorized the use of the Russian Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine in the country, official government information website announced on Friday.

It was reported that at the same time, the Ministry of Health has approved the use of the US vaccine Moderna in Vietnam. So far, the only vaccine approved by the Ministry of Health of Vietnam for use on the territory of the country was AstraZeneca.

Earlier this week, Minister of Health of the Republic Nguyen Thanh Long said that the Ministry was actively negotiating for the supply of the Sputnik V vaccine.

On February 2, The Lancet published the results of the third phase of a clinical trial of the Russian vaccine, according to which it turned out to be one of the safest and most effective in the world.

Sputnik V is one of the world's top three coronavirus vaccines in terms of the number of approvals issued by government regulators.

Sputnik V had been approved earlier in Russia, Belarus, Argentina, Bolivia, Serbia, Algeria, Palestine, Venezuela, Paraguay, Turkmenistan, Hungary, UAE, Iran, Republic of Guinea, Tunisia, Armenia, Mexico, Nicaragua, Republika Srpska (entity of Bosnia and Herzegovina), Lebanon, Myanmar, Pakistan, Mongolia, Bahrain, Montenegro, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Gabon, San Marino, and Ghana, RDIF said.

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.