Russian diamond producer Alrosa PJSC has said it will buy and donate the Sputnik V Russian-developed coronavirus vaccines to Angola and Zimbabwe to help the two Southern African nations vaccinate their populations against the viral disease.
The company’s Chief Executive Officer Sergey Ivanov told Bloomberg on Wednesday that the vaccines will be supplied once emergency-use authorization for the Sputnik V vaccine is granted.
Ivanov, however, did not specify the number of vaccines that will be given to the two countries but said the first shipments are expected to start from the second half of March.
Sputnik V (Victory), the Russian-developed COVID-19 vaccine has now been approved for use in at least 20 countries and has an efficacy of 92%, rivalling vaccines developed in the United States and Europe such as Pfizer-BioNtech, Moderna and Oxford Uni-Astra-Zeneca.
Alrosa, which has operations in both Angola and Zimbabwe, holds 25 prospecting concessions, in the latter and said it expects to receive another 15 by late February to early March.