Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Igor Morgulov (Photo by Valeriy Sharifulin/TASS)
MOSCOW – Asian countries have expressed interest in Russian-produced drugs and vaccines against the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19), Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Igor Morgulov said Thursday.
In an open interview with TASS, First Deputy Director General Mikhail Gusman, Morgulov said the Russian consumer rights watchdog actively cooperates with Asian states in bilateral and multilateral formats, namely within the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), East Asia Summit, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean).
"We will surely carry on this work," he said. "Asian partners have expressed a great deal of interest in the Russian experience of countering the pandemic, first and foremost in the developments related to the production of drugs aimed to combat this infection. And of course, a great deal of interest is expressed in the prospects of producing a vaccine against Covid-19."
Morgulov added that Russia continues to aid many Asian states, sending medical equipment, test systems, and means of individual protection.
"Our mobile labs, for example, have been involved in the research of the coronavirus in the remote areas of Mongolia. We have similar labs based on the Russian-Vietnamese tropical center," he said.
In late December 2019, Chinese officials notified the World Health Organization (WHO) about the outbreak of a previously unknown pneumonia in the city of Wuhan in central China.
Since then, cases of the novel coronavirus – named Covid-19 by the WHO – have been reported in every corner of the globe.
Last March 11, the WHO declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic. (TASS)
