The Minister of Pharmaceutical Industry in Algeria, Lotfi Benabahmed, said that his country will start producing the Russian Sputnik V vaccine against the coronavirus in September, in partnership with Moscow.

Algeria, which has already received 50,000 doses of the Sputnik V vaccine, announced in February that it was in talks with Russia to produce the vaccine.

On state radio, Benbahmed said the vaccine will be produced in cooperation with the pharma group Saidal, noting that the company will receive assistance from a leading Indian laboratory specialized in manufacturing vaccines.

He did not mention the name of the Indian laboratory.

The Director of the Control Department at the Ministry of Pharmaceutical Industries, Bachir Allouache, said at the beginning of March that final touches had been put in place with the Russian partner to produce the Sputnik V vaccine, according to the Algerian website 'Echorouk'.

The Sputnik V vaccine was registered by the Ministry of Health of the Russia in August 2020, which was developed by the Gamaleya Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology.

Additionally, the general medical journal 'The Lancet' published results of the third stage of clinical research for the vaccine, confirming its high efficacy and safety, as during the third phase of clinical trials, the vaccine showed high rates of effectiveness and the ability to protect immunity, with efficacy reaching 91.6 percent.

Sputnik V has been approved in 56 countries with a total population of more than 1.5 billion people.