New Delhi (NVI): Argentina’s health ministry today said that it has granted emergency authorization to the Russian Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine, making the country first in Latin America to do so.
The first shipment of the 25 million doses of the vaccine bought by the Argentine government is due to arrive on Thursday.
The authorization for the Gam-CovidVac vaccine, nicknamed Sputnik V after the Soviet-era satellite, was given “in conformity with the recommendations” of Argentina’s drug administration agency, Health Minister Gines Gonzalez Garcia said.
On Tuesday, an Aerolineas Argentinas flight left for Moscow to collect the first 300,000 doses of the Sputnik V vaccine developed by the Nikolai Gamaleya Epidemiology and Microbiology Center.
Argentina previously signed an agreement to acquire the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine and is also part of the World Health Organization’s Covax mechanism.
The Latin American country has recorded over 1.5 million coronavirus cases and more than 42,000 deaths amongst its 44 million population.
-CHK
