Brazil pharma to produce Sputnik V
BRASILIA: A Brazilian pharmaceutical company said on Friday it has signed an agreement with the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) to produce Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine against Covid-19 starting in the second half of November.
The private company Uniao Quimica said on Friday that it was bound by a confidentiality agreement not to give any technical or scientific details. It still must obtain approval from Brazil’s health regulator Anvisa.
This is the second agreement to produce the Russian vaccine in Brazil, where four other vaccines are already being tested.
The Russian vaccine is being developed by Moscow’s Gamaleya Research Institute and marketed by the RDIF, which last month also entered an agreement with the Brazilian state of Parana to test and produce the vaccine.
The Brazilian state of Bahia has also signed an agreement to conduct Phase III clinical trials of the Sputnik V vaccine and plans to buy 50 million doses to market in northeastern Brazil. It is not clear, however, when such testing can begin.
A spokeswoman for Anvisa said neither Parana nor Bahia state governments had filed requests for approval of their plans to test the Russian vaccine, let alone produce it.
Bahia secretary of health, Fabio VilasBoas, said that the RDIF and the Gamaleya Institute are dealing directly with Anvisa regarding data on earlier testing.
In separate news, Brazil’s health regulator authorised the import of a Chinese-produced vaccine after claims from President Jair Bolsonaro that the country lacked the creditability to develop a cure for the coronavirus.
The Butantan Institute, a Sao Paulo research centre that has partnered with Sinovac Biotech Ltd, was granted “exceptional” permission to bring six million doses of the unregistered Coronavac drug into the country for phase three trials, Anvisa, said in a statement on Friday.
The trial has become the latest flash point in the fight between local leadership and Mr Bolsonaro over the handling of the outbreak. The president said earlier this week that his government would not purchase the drug due “to its origin.”