MOSCOW AIR / BUENOS, (Reuters) – An Argentinian company has produced test batches of the Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine from Russia, the first in Latin America, with the aim of increasing the manufacture of the drug by mid-year as the wider region enters’ tackle a new surge in infections. Yesterday Russian sovereign wealth fund RDIF and Richmond Laboratorios said the Argentine pharmaceutical company had conducted the test production and that the batches would be sent to the Russian Gamaleya Institute for a quality audit.
“We estimate that if the process is positive, scale-up production would start in June 2021,” Richmond said in a statement, adding that it aims to get the vaccine ready “in the shortest time potential for the country and region. ”
The Argentine vaccination program has relied heavily on Sputnik V. The South American country was one of the first in the world to use the vaccine at scale to vaccinate its population and has faced delays in getting other vaccines.
The country has seen outbreaks of the new coronavirus hit daily highs over the past week, forcing the government to tighten restrictions in and around Buenos Aires and the capital city to accelerate its vaccination program.
Russian scientist Denis Logunov, lead developer of the Sputnik V vaccine, said Friday that the vaccine has proven itself 97.6% effective against COVID-19 in a real-world assessment, based on data from 3.8 million people.
That was higher than the 91.6% rate outlined in results from a large-scale trial of Sputnik V published in The Lancet medical journal earlier this year.