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Kazakh president thanks Russia for help during pandemic

On February 1, Kazakhstan began vaccinating the population against coronavirus with Sputnik V produced in Russia

ST. PETERSBURG, December 28. /TASS/. Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev on Tuesday thanked Russia for helping his nation during the pandemic when he spoke at the informal summit of the Commonwealth of Independent States in St. Petersburg.

"I would like to express my gratitude for the assistance to Kazakhstan in the most difficult period of time," he said. "We have been able to start joint production using the Russian Sputnik V technology."

"The Sputnik V vaccine, one might say, played a decisive role in stopping the onset of the coronavirus," Tokayev went on to say.

Kazakhstan on February 1 began vaccinating the population against coronavirus with Sputnik V produced in Russia. At the end of February, a pharmaceutical company in the Kazakh city of Karaganda started to ship the Russian vaccine across the country. On April 26, inoculations with the local vaccine QazVac started in the country. At the end of April, the Samruk-Kazyna National Welfare Fund purchased 1 million doses of the Hayat-Vax vaccine from the Chinese company Sinopharm.

In early June, the country received the first shipment of the CoronaVac vaccine produced by the Chinese company Sinovac Biotech, which was 500,000 doses. On July 15, the Russian Direct Investment Fund announced that the Ministry of Health of Kazakhstan has registered the Sputnik Light single-component vaccine. At the beginning of August, 1 million doses of Vero Cell drug made by Sinopharm were delivered to the country. On November 10, the country received the first shipment of the Comirnaty coronavirus vaccine produced by the American company Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech, which is used for teenagers over 12 years of age and pregnant women.

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