COVID-19 vaccine: The Russian health minister has confirmed that one in seven volunteers complained of side effects after being injected with Sputnik V, Russia’s experimental vaccine against the coronavirus disease (Covid-19.  Mikhail Murashko, the Russian health minister, said more than 300 out of the announced 40,000 volunteers have been vaccinated with Sputnik V so far, according to the state-run TASS news agency. 

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“Approximately 14% have small complaints of weakness, muscle pain for 24 hours and an occasional increase in body temperature,” TASS quoted Murashko as saying on Wednesday.  

The minister said the symptoms after being injected with the anti-coronavirus vaccine “level off” by the next day. “The complications are described in the instructions and are predictable,” he said, according to TASS.

Volunteers are expected to receive a second shot of the adenovirus-based viral vector vaccine within 21 days of the first. 

COVID-19 vaccine in India 

Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan on Thursday told Rajya Sabha that there are chances that a vaccine could come in the country early next year but till then it was necessary for people to follow social distancing and wear masks. 

The minister said that despite the number of cases, the mortality rate in the country remained one of the lowest in the world. He said steps like testing, isolation of infected persons and other steps can be attributed to this lower mortality rate. Citing the examples of Spain and Brazil, he said the mortality rate in those countries was over 11 times that of India. 

"We want to bring it (mortality rate) to less than one per cent. We have 50 lakh cases right now but out of these, only 10 lakh are active cases in the country right now," Vardhan said.