Developers of the Russian Sputnik V Covid19 vaccine announced on Twitter on Wednesday that. More than one million people in Russia have been inoculated against the coronavirus with “Sputnik V".

The director of the Gamaleya Research Institute, which developed the vaccine, Alexander Ginsburg, gave roughly the same estimate in conversation with RIA Novosti yesterday. He reported that more than 1.5 million doses of Sputnik V will be delivered to civilians by the end of the New Year holidays.

The federal government headquarters responsible for fighting the virus isn’t publishing exact statistics on vaccination against COVID-19 in Russia. Earlier, Health Minister Mikhail Murashko was the one to announce vaccination numbers — according to him, 800,000 people in Russia were immunized against the coronavirus as of January 2.

Russia registered Sputnik V as its first vaccine against the coronavirus on August 11, 2020. The post-registration study about the effectiveness of the vaccine is currently ongoing, in parallel with its civilian circulation in Russia. According to the newswire Interfax, Russia has received applications from more than 50 countries to purchase more than 1.2 billion doses of its vaccine.

According to a recent public opinion survey conducted by the independent Levada Center in December 2020, 58 percent of Russians responded saying they don’t want to be immunized with the Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine.