Local firm produces first batch of Covid vaccine in Argentina [View all]

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An Argentine pharmaceutical firm says it has produced the first local batch of the Sputnik V vaccine against coronavirus and will be dispatching it to Moscow for quality control checks imminently.

The first batch consisted of 21,176 doses. Laboratorios Richmond confirmed that mass production of the vaccine would begin in June, with an estimated initial capacity of one million doses monthly - and eventually up to 5 million monthly.

The announcement means that Argentina has now become the first country in Latin America to start production of Sputnik V, originally developed by Russia’s Gamaleya Centre.

According to a press release, the doses produced in Argentina “could be exported to countries in Latin America at a later stage.”

Gamaleya's Sputnik V accounts for 62% of the 6.5 million doses applied thus far in Argentina - mainly to senior citizens and health, education and security staff.

A recent poll shows that while 79% of Argentine adults are willing to be vaccinated, 62% believe the campaign is going “slowly.”

Daily COVID-19 cases there have skyrocketed from 7,000 a month ago, to 29,145 on Monday; nearly 60,000 deaths have been recorded since the pandemic began.

Some 63% of those surveyed backed crowding restrictions enacted by President Alberto Fernández on April 9th, effective for three weeks.

“Since classes returned (on March 1st), the contagion curve has grown exponentially,” Fernández explained on Friday.

Buenos Aires Mayor Horacio Rodríguez Larreta - whose right-wing JxC coalition staunchly opposes Fernández - has defied the in-person schooling suspension however, despite a federal court ruling today.

At: https://www.batimes.com.ar/news/argentina/pharmaceutical-firm-produces-first-batch-of-sputnik-v-vaccine-in-argentina.phtml

Argentine Presidential Advisor Cecilia Nicolini, Health Minister Carla Vizzotti, and Richmond Laboratories President Marcelo Figueiras pose with vials of locally-made Sputnik V vaccine - which Richmond plans to mass-produce by June, pending approval from Russia's Gamaleya.

This would make Argentina, currently struggling with one of the world's highest rates of new daily COVID-19 cases, one of around a dozen countries producing a vaccine.

So far just 1 in 8 Argentines have received at least one dose, compared to 40% in the U.S.