Russia boasted that Sputnik V was the world’s “first registered COVID-19 vaccine” after the government gave it regulatory approval in early August. The move drew criticism from international experts,who pointed out that the vaccine had only been tested on several dozen people at the time.

Putin dismissed doubts,saying in August that one of his daughters was among the early vaccine recipients.

Sputnik V has been offered to medical workers and teachers for several months even though the vaccine was still in the middle of advanced trials. Several top Russian officials said they had gotten the required two jabs,and the Russian military this week began vaccinating the crews of navy ships scheduled to depart on a mission.

Health Minister Mikhail Murashko said on Wednesday that more than 100,000 people in Russia have received the shots.

Russia is offering the vaccine for free to people aged 18 to 60 who don’t suffer from chronic illnesses and aren’t pregnant or breastfeeding.

The two-shot Sputnik V was developed by the Moscow-based Gamaleya Institute. An advanced study among 40,000 volunteers was announced two weeks after the vaccine received government approval and that is still ongoing.

Kirill Dmitriyev,head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund that bankrolled Sputnik V’s development,said last month that more than 1 billion doses of the vaccine were expected to be produced outside of Russia next year.

Last month,developers of the vaccine said interim analysis of trial data showed it was 91.4 per cent effective. The conclusion was based on 39 infections among 18,794 study participants that received both doses of either the vaccine or a placebo,which is a much lower number of infections than Western drugmakers have looked at when assessing the effectiveness of their vaccines. Two other Russia-designed vaccines are also undergoing tests.

On Wednesday,Britain became the first country in the West to authorise the use of a vaccine against the coronavirus developed by US drugmaker Pfizer and Germany’s BioNTech.

The first doses are set to be administered on Tuesday,with the National Health Service (NHS) giving top priority to vaccinating the over-80s,frontline healthcare workers and care home staff and residents.

Britain gave emergency use approval for the vaccine last week - jumping ahead in the global race to begin the most crucial mass inoculation programme in history.

In total,Britain has ordered 40 million doses - enough to vaccinate 20 million people in the country of 67 million. About 800,000 doses are expected to be available within the first week.

Russia has been swept with a resurgence of the outbreak this fall,with numbers of new infections exceeding the levels recorded early in the pandemic,but the authorities so far have refrained from a tight lockdown imposed in the spring.

On Saturday,Russia reported a new record high of daily infections at 28,782,including 7993 in Moscow. The government task force has recorded a total of 42,684 virus-related deaths since the start of the outbreak.

Russia’s total of over 2.4 million confirmed cases is currently the fourth-largest caseload in the world behind the United States,India and Brazil.

In China,developers are speeding up final testing on potential vaccines,the Chinese foreign minister said on Thursday during a UN meeting.

China's fledgling pharmaceutical industry has at least five vaccines from four producers being tested in more than a dozen countries including Russia,Egypt and Mexico. Health experts say even if they are successful,the certification process for the United States,Europe,Japan and other developed countries might be too complex for them to be used there. However,China said it will ensure the products are affordable for developing countries.

One developer,China National Pharmaceutical Group,known as Sinopharm,said in November it applied for final market approval for use of its vaccine in China. Others have been approved for emergency use on health workers and other people deemed at high risk of infection.

“We must be prepared for large-scale production,” said Vice-Premier Sun Chunlan,who has overseen much of the country's response,during a visit Wednesday to developers,according to the official Xinhua News Agency.

Sun visited one of Sinopharm’s Beijing subsidiary companies;another producer,Sinovac,and a research lab under the National Medical Products Administration,a regulatory agency that approves medical products for public use.

The government has yet to say how many people it plans to vaccinate. Sun said plans call for vaccinating border personnel and other high-risk populations this month.

The companies are using more traditional techniques than Western developers.

They say unlike Pfizer's vaccine,which must be kept frozen at temperatures as low as minus 70 degrees,theirs can be stored at 2-8 degrees.

More than 1 million people in China have received experimental vaccines under emergency use approval. Health experts question why China is using them on such a vast scale now that the outbreak is largely under control within its borders.

AP,Reuters