OREANDA-NEWS. Norway may purchase the Russian Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine if the drug is approved in the European Union. This was announced on Wednesday by Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg, speaking in the country's parliament.

Solberg said on the air of the NRK TV company that Norway is open to buy the Russian vaccine if it is available, if the Norwegians have confidence in it and they can buy it together with the EU. But at the same time, she noted that Norway is not ready to buy vaccines that have not been approved in the EU.

She clarified that the Norwegian authorities have not contacted the Russian side regarding the purchase of the vaccine, but Sputnik V is unlikely to be available before June - by this time, the country's authorities hope to have already reached a high level of vaccination.

Norway is now experiencing a third wave of coronavirus, but the Kingdom's Minister of Health, Bent Høye, believes that the country will cope with it too. According to Høye, a new, more contagious strain of coronavirus has led to such a leap.

The Russian Sputnik V vaccine is currently registered in more than 50 countries of the world with a total population of over 1.4 billion people. The vaccine efficacy is 91.6%, this figure is confirmed by the authoritative publication of data in the leading medical journal The Lancet.