Food and Drug Dep’t clears Russian and Chinese COVID vaccines

The Minister of Health, Dr Frank Anthony yesterday announced that the Government Analyst-Food and Drug Department (GA-FDD) has granted emergency use approval of the Russian Sputnik and China’s Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccines in Guyana.

During the daily COVID-19 update, Dr Anthony said that the GAFDD

has approved the emergency use of the two vaccines in Guyana. He added that the paperwork for the two vaccines to be approved for emergency use in Guyana was submitted to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

“In the case of the Sputnik V, we have been in discussions with the Russian manufacturer for quite some weeks. When we review the data from the vaccine, we saw that the vaccine is about 90.6 per cent efficacious and of the vaccines so far, this one has very high efficacy and we have started discussions with them in order to be able to get some of these vaccines to Guyana. Those discussions have advanced and we have been able, through our Food and Drug Administration here to issue an emergency use authorisation for these vaccines,” the Minister related. He also mentioned that the Sinopharm vaccine has an efficacy of 79.4 per cent. The Minister did not disclose when the vaccines would be arriving and explained that the arrangements are still being finalised for when they will be arriving and how many doses would be made available to Guyana.

On Tuesday, the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) announced that the Ministry of Health (MoH) in Guyana has approved the Russian Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine. The report had said that the vaccine was approved under an emergency use authorisation procedure. Dr Anthony yesterday explained that this is one of the three methods the country has taken to secure approval for COVID vaccines in Guyana. According to the Minister, Guyana sought to look at three methods to approve vaccines. The first being stringent regulatory authority approval. He listed regulatory authorities such as the food and drug administrations in Australia, Canada, Europe, the United Kingdom, and the United States, and also approval by the WHO and whether it has been approved by large countries in the region. To further explain the last method, Anthony said that Bolivia, Nicaragua, Paraguay, and Venezuela, approved the Sputnik vaccine, while Saint Vincent and the Grenadines is the only Caribbean country to approve its use. The Sputnik V had been approved earlier in several countries including Algeria, Argentina, Armenia, Bahrain, Belarus, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Mexico.

In January, Dr Anthony had revealed that the government was in discussion with several countries including India, China, and Russia, regarding the procurement of COVID-19 vaccines. China has since pledged 20,000 doses of its Sinopharm vaccine while Barbados recently donated 3,000 doses of the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine, kickstarting the first phase of the COVID-19 vaccinations in Guyana. The Minister reminded that frontline workers are being vaccinated with these COVID-19 vaccines and that this will continue. Additionally, the Minister had also disclosed that COVAX will be sending 104,000 doses of AstraZeneca’s vaccine. The vaccines are expected to arrive either later this month or early March.