LOCAL LAB AGREES DEAL TO PRODUCE SPUTNIK V VACCINE IN ARGENTINA

Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine will be produced and manufactured in Argentina by a local laboratory, the government has announced. Pharmaceutical firm Laboratorios Richmond, based in Buenos Aires with a factory in Pilar, confirmed it had reached an agreement with a Russian state agency representing the creators of the vaccine on Friday.

“A memorandum of understanding was signed between the Management Company of Russian Direct Investment Fund

(the representative of Gama (laboratorios leya) and my client Richmond), for the purpose of facilitating cooperation between the parties in order to speedquire ily acquire manufacturing of a vacagainst cine the virus named COVID-19, which is [to be] produced in the Republic of Argentina,” read a statement quoted by multiple Russian media outlets.

“This potential development will be carried out with the participation of Hetero Labs Limited, a laboratory established in India, with whom Laboratorios Richmond has had a strategic alliance for more than 25 years,” continued the statement. Argentina was one of the first countries in the region to approve the vaccine (ANMAT gave the green light in December 2020) and sign an agreement with Russia to buy and use Sputnik V. The doses it is currently using were produced in South Korea and India.

The government has already received 1.22 million doses from the Gamaleya laboratory, as well as around 580,000 doses of Covishield, the shot produced by India’s Serum Institute, which is based on technology used in the Astrazeneca-oxford University jab.

In addition, a shipment of 904,000 vaccines from the Chinese laboratory Sinopharm arrived in the country on Thursday night.

Argentina has so far registered more than two million confirmed cases of Covid-19, with more than 52,000 deaths.