NUR-SULTAN – Kazakhstan began production on Monday of the Russian COVID-19 vaccine, Sputnik V, with which it plans to begin a national vaccination campaign in February, the Kazakh government has announced.

Kazakh Prime Minister Askar Mamin attended the start of the vaccine’s production at the Karaganda Pharmaceutical Complex, in the center of the country, a government press release said.

“Mass vaccination of the Sputnik V vaccine produced in Kazakhstan will begin in February 2021,” Mamin said in the government statement.

He said doctors, teachers, students, law enforcement officials, social service workers and people from risk groups will be vaccinated first.

The head of the Kazakh government, who highlighted the importance of having Sputnik V production in the Central Asian country, stressed that COVID vaccination would be voluntary.

The Karaganda plant expects to produce two million doses of the vaccine under a Russian-Kazakh agreement.

According to the World Health Organization, there have been 190,966 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 2,609 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic in Kazakhstan, which has a population of almost 19 million people.