The Defence Minister of Russia, Sergei Shoigu, said on 27 November 2020 that Russia plans to vaccinate over 400,000 military personnel against COVID-19, as authorities reported a record 27,543 new COVID-19 cases, Reuters news agency reported on Friday.

News agencies cited Shoigu as saying that 2,500 military personnel had been vaccinated against COVID-19 already, with the total expected to reach 80,000 by the end of the year.

Russia, which is working on several vaccines against COVID-19, has reportedly seen a surge in COVID-19 infections since September 2020 but authorities have resisted imposing lockdowns, relying instead on targeted measures in certain regions.

Indian pharmaceutical company Hetero will manufacture over 100 million doses of Russia's Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine per year under the terms of a deal with Russia's RDIF sovereign wealth fund, which was unveiled on Friday.

Siberia's Vector Institute, developing EpiVacCorona, Russia's second COVID-19 vaccine, is ready to produce up to five million doses of its vaccine per year, Alexander Ryzhikov, head of the institute's zoonotic infections and influenza department, said on Friday.

Russia, with 2,215,533 COVID-19 infections, has the fourth-largest number of COVID-19 cases in the world behind the US, India and Brazil. It has recorded 38,558 deaths related to COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic.