The Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) has invested more than 39 billion rubles in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic. Kirill Dmitriev, the head of the organization, said this at the Eastern Economic Forum.

"We immediately looked at how to channel our investment resource and the resource of our international partnerships in order to fight the pandemic as powerfully as possible. We immediately invested in a system of highly effective rapid tests, we financed Russia's first coronavirus drug. And we invested in and selected what we thought was and still seems to be the most effective and safe vaccine in the world, which is the Sputnik V vaccine," Dmitriev said.

He said that RDIF was not completely clear at the time how the pandemic would evolve, but took the risks and invested 22 billion rubles in vaccine development.

"Our future strategy is to use the Sputnik Light vaccine, in which RDIF has invested 17 billion rubles, not only to provide revaccination to Russians, not only to use it as an independent vaccine, but also to use it as a booster," he added.In this regard, he stressed that the coronavirus showed how important investors' work in healthcare is.

The VI Eastern Economic Forum is taking place in Vladivostok on September 2-4.

Made in Russia / Made in Russia

Author: Maria Buzanakova