Moscow will open its new centres to vaccinate people against Covid-19 on December 5th and the first people to receive the shot will be teachers, doctors and social workers, Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said on Thursday.
The move comes after an order directly from Russian President Vladimir Putin.
This came just hours after the UK authorised the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine for general use from next week.
Putin said Russia will have produced two million Sputnik V vaccine doses within days.
Russia claimed the vaccine had a 92 per cent efficacy rate last month.
“Let’s agree on this - you will not report to me next week, but you will start large-scale vaccination... Let’s get to work already,” Putin told Deputy Prime Minister Tatiana Golikova in a video conference.
Russia has resisted lockdowns since a second wave of Covid-19 hit the country, instead implementing regional restrictions.
