The Russian space agency said it planned to offer the Sputnik coronavirus vaccine to cosmonauts but insisted that the vaccination would be done on a voluntary basis.

While some Russian cosmonauts initially said they did not plan to get vaccinated, a Roscosmos spokesman told AFP that members of the country's space programme will be inoculated — “on a voluntary basis only”.

“Members of the cosmonaut corps and employees of the Cosmonaut Training Centre will be among the first to get vaccinated,” Roscosmos head Dmitry Rogozin said, in a statement released by the Russian Direct Investment Fund that has funded the development of the vaccine.

Sputnik V “will play an important role in ensuring the biological safety of the Russian space programme,” Health Minister Mikhail Murashko added in the same statement.