Carlos Alvarado said that the Government hopes to start, first, the packaging process and, later, the complete production of the Sputnik V vaccine in Venezuela.
By:
AFP
–
–
The Venezuelan government said this Thursday 27-A that it aspires to produce the Russian vaccine against the new coronavirus, and announced that it will begin to select candidates for the testing phase.
“There is complete disposition of the comrades of the Russian Federation and, of course, our greatest interest to speed up the production and the incorporation very quickly to phase 3 (stage of tests in humans) of the Sputnik V vaccine”, declared the Minister of Salud, Carlos Alvarado, on VTV.
“There was an exchange of questions from the technical point of view to see if (…) we can start, first, the packaging process and, later, the complete production of the vaccine in Venezuela as we aspire,” Alvarado said after a videoconference with members of the Nikolai Gamaleya Research Center for Epidemiology and Microbiology – in charge of producing Sputnik V – and the Russian Investment Fund.
It was agreed to “sign confidentiality agreements and begin the selection of possible candidates for the development of phase 3 in Venezuela,” added the minister, who a few days ago assured that Venezuela would provide some 500 volunteers for this.
Russia, one of Nicolás Maduro’s main allies in the face of international pressure led by the United States to displace the socialist ruler from power, said on August 11 that it would be the first country to approve a vaccine against covid-19, which he christened Sputnik V. in honor of the first satellite launched into space, in 1957.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that approving a ‘candidate’ vaccine requires a rigorous review of safety data.
However, at the moment, Russia has not published a detailed study that allows independent verification of its results.
In the midst of the pandemic, Venezuela has received medical supplies from Russia, a country with which it has maintained close relations since the time of the late former president Hugo Chávez (1999-2013), who bought weapons and military equipment for hundreds of millions of dollars in the middle of a Oil bonanza that ended in 2014 to unleash a serious crisis.
Since the virus arrived in the Caribbean country of 30 million inhabitants in March, there have been 41,965 confirmed infections and 351 deaths, according to official figures, questioned by the opposition and organizations such as Human Rights Watch, considering that they hide a much worse situation.
The pandemic found Venezuela with an acute shortage of medicines and precarious public health systems, symptoms of the economic collapse that has caused the exodus of some 5 million migrants since the end of 2015, according to the UN.
– .
