Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, who announced the programme earlier in the week, said it was being offered to people in the city of 13 million who work in schools and the health service, and social workers.

He said the list would grow as more of the vaccine became available.

An online registration service allows city residents in the above professions aged 18-60 to book free appointments at 70 sites around the city.

People who have received injections in the last 30 days or who have had respiratory diseases within the last two weeks will be excluded, as will those with certain chronic illnesses, and pregnant and breastfeeding women.

Each person will receive two injections, the second 21 days after the first.

Sputnik V, which was registered in August, is being used.

Developers say it is 95% effective and causes no major side effects, but it is still undergoing mass testing.

Thousands of people have already registered to get the first of two jabs over the weekend, but it is unclear how much Russia can manufacture.

Producers are only expected to make two million doses of the vaccine by the end of the year.

In the news this morning, a science spokesperson said that Russia had missed out a whole stage in the development programme, (didn't say which stage), in order to rush this out, so a whole batch of safety measures seem to have been skipped.

(This is in contrast to the Pfizer, Oxford and Modena vaccines, which haven't skipped any of the stages).


That might be why there are so many categories of exclusions of people with the Sputnik vaccine.

Sputnik V? How are they going to get them all into the space?