President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih has confirmed that the government has begun work to order the Russian-made Sputnik vaccine.
Speaking to journalists, President Solih said that the government had begun work to place the order for a vaccine shipment from Russia and that the government is looking to order 200,000 doses of the vaccine.
He added that the Health Ministry would start the order process within the next two to three days.
Sputnik is an adenovirus viral vector vaccine for COVID-19 developed by the Gamaleya Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology in Russia.
It was initially approved for distribution in Russia and then in 59 other countries (as of April 2021) on the preliminary results of Phase I–II studies eventually published on 4 September 2020.
The Maldives is currently administering the Covisheild vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford university, the Chinese-developed Sinopharm vaccine, and the US-developed Pfizer vaccine.
Meanwhile, Health Emergency Operations Center said today that a total of 159,530 people in the country have now completed both doses of the vaccine.
HPA also said that 307,210 people in the Maldives have now received the first dose of the vaccine in the massive inoculation drive that began in February.
