The World Health Organization (WHO) declined on Wednesday, August 11 to name a deadline for the assessment of Russia's Sputnik V vaccine against Covid-19, saying legal proceedings were in progress, Sputnik News reports.

The Russian Direct Investment Fund, which markets the shot abroad, applied for its Emergency Use Listing with the WHO in October. The UN agency's authorization will allow Sputnik V to be rolled out globally.

"The process is still ongoing. We have some legal proceedings ongoing at the moment and we don't have a date to finalize the assessment," Mariangela Simao, WHO's assistant director-general, told a press briefing.

WHO said in June that it had conducted nine inspections of Sputnik V clinical trial and manufacturing sites, some of them jointly with the European Medicines Agency. The EU drug regulator began its own rolling review of the vaccine in March.