MOSCOW, February 12. /TASS/: Thanks to mass vaccination against the novel coronavirus infection, Russia is about to take the epidemic under control, Oksana Drabkina, the Russian Health Ministry’s chief visiting therapist, said on Friday.
"To be able to say that the infection is under control or predictable, we need to develop the so-called herd immunity. We know that we will be able to say it is done, when around 60% of the adult population are vaccinated," she said. "Vaccination has kicked off. It is underway, with its scope growing. From this point of view, we, probably, can optimistically say that we are about to take this infection under control."
A mass vaccination campaign in Russian regions was launched on January 18. According to Denis Logunov, deputy director of the Gamaleya Center, the developer of the Sputnik V vaccine, around 2.2 million people have received the first shot of the vaccine.
To date, 4,042,837 coronavirus cases have been confirmed in Russia, with 3,559,142 patients having recovered from the disease. Russia’s latest data indicates 79,194 fatalities nationwide. Earlier, the Russian government set up an Internet hotline to keep the public updated on the coronavirus situation.
