Kazakhstan begins using self-developed COVID vaccine, becomes 6th country to produce shot
They’re taking their shot.
Kazakhstan is now the sixth country to develop and use a COVID vaccine, with the first shots of QazVac being administered Monday.
Health minister Alexey Tsoi received one of those shots in the capital city of Nur-Sultan, Anadolu news agency reported.
Around 1 million Kazakhs have already received at least one dose of the Sputnik V vaccine developed in Russia, according to Reuters. Like Sputnik V and the Pfizer vaccine, QazVac is administered in two doses, three weeks apart.
QazVac shots are being given even though phase III trials are not yet complete, Reuters reported. Leaders in the world’s ninth-largest country by land area said the first two phases went well enough to start an emergency rollout.
The first batch of QazVac contains 50,000 doses, according to the Anadolu Agency. It has been distributed throughout the central Asian nation of 19 million and was developed by the country’s Research Institute for Biological Safety Problems.
Other vaccines in use around the world have been developed in the U.S., U.K., China, India and Russia.
