Panacea Biotec announced receipt of manufacturing license from Drugs Controller General (India) for Sputnik V vaccine against COVID-19 pursuant to its collaboration with Russian Direct Investment Fund (Russia’s sovereign wealth fund). The license is a necessary condition for using Sputnik V produced by Panacea Biotec in India.

A company statement informed, “The batches produced at Panacea Biotec’s facilities at Baddi, Himachal Pradesh were earlier shipped to the Gamaleya Center in Russia for quality control. The said batches have successfully passed all the checks for quality parameters both at the Gamaleya Center in Russia and at the Central Drug Laboratory, Kasauli, Himachal Pradesh in India.”

Sputnik V was registered in India under the emergency use authorisation procedure on April 12, 2021, and vaccination against COVID-19 with the Russian vaccine started on May 14, 2021.

Sputnik V has been registered in 67 countries globally.

The vaccine is based on a platform of human adenoviral vectors and uses two different vectors for the two shots in a course of vaccination.