RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Argentina received 400,000 doses of the second component of the Russian vaccine Sputnik V to complete vaccination schedules against Covid-19, an objective that the government of Alberto Fernández has set as a priority for this month.
This batch is in addition to another 200,000 doses of the second component of Sputnik V, which arrived in the South American country last week.
The shipments of doses of the second component of the vaccine developed by the National Center for Epidemiology and Microbiology Research Gamaleya have been delayed.
Still, the Argentine government expects to have more doses this month to complete the vaccination schedules’however, it has already begun since last week to apply second-dose vaccines from other laboratories to those who received Sputnik V as a first dose.
According to official sources, 204,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine will arrive in Argentina this Monday night. In comparison, another 326,400 doses from the same laboratory are expected to arrive next Wednesday.
Argentina is also expecting for this week the arrival of 500 liters of raw material for the local production of the second component of the Sputnik V vaccine by the Argentine laboratory Richmond.
According to the Argentine Ministry of Health, Richmond will present the first batch of this component in the next few days, which has already been authorized for its application by the Gamaleya center.
With 45 million inhabitants, Argentina has received a total of 42,801,930 doses of Covid-19 vaccines from different suppliers since the beginning of the immunization campaign at the end of 2020.
Of this total, 14.7 million correspond to China’s Sinopharm; 11.8 million to Sputnik V (9.3 million of the first component and almost 2.5 million of the second); 3.5 million from Moderna; and 200,000 from Cansino.
The rest correspond to AstraZeneca vaccines: 9.9 million doses whose active ingredient was produced in Argentina; 1.9 million received through the Covax mechanism of the World Health Organization (WHO), and 580,000 doses manufactured in India (Covishield).
According to official data released on Monday, 34.6 million doses have been administered so far. 26 million people received the first dose of the vaccine, while 8.5 million people have already been inoculated with the second dose.
Given the arrival of the Delta variant of the coronavirus, whose first cases not linked to travelers from abroad were reported two weeks ago, the Argentine health authorities agreed to make it a priority to complete vaccination schedules in August, particularly in the most at-risk populations.
According to the Argentine government, the objective is to achieve in August that 60% of all those over 50 years of age complete the vaccination schedule.