(Karachi) As part of efforts to curb the spread of COVID-19, Pakistan has finalized a deal to acquire two million doses of the Russian-made Sputnik V vaccine, local media reported on Tuesday.

The first consignment of two million doses of Sputnik V vaccine will be transported to Pakistan soon. An aircraft of the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) will airlift the first batch of the Russian vaccine from Abu Dhabi to the country.

Earlier, Pakistan approved Russia's Sputnik V COVID vaccine for emergency use, becoming the 22nd country to approve it. The vaccine will be administered in two shots, three weeks apart, and has a six-month shelf life.

Russian scientist Denis Logunov, one of the lead developers of the Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine, had said that the shot had proven itself 97.6 percent effective against COVID-19 in a real-world assessment, based on data from 3.8 million people.

The new effectiveness rate is higher than the 91.6 percent rate outlined in results from a large-scale trial of Sputnik V and published in The Lancet medical journal.