RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The pharmaceutical company União Química 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 company said it it was bound by a confidentiality agreement not to give any technical or scientific details. The laboratory still needs to secure approval from the National Health Regulatory Agency (ANVISA) for production.
The agreement signed by União Química is the second for the production of the Russian vaccine in Brazill, where four other vaccines against Covid-19 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 Paraná to test and produce the vaccine.
The government of Bahia has also signed an agreement to conduct Phase 3 clinical trials results of the Sputnik V vaccine and plans to purchase 50 million doses.
However, it is unclear when these trials may begin.
An ANVISA spokesperson said the governments of Paraná and Bahia have not yet submitted approval requests for their plans to test the Russian vaccine, much less produce it.
Bahia Secretary of Health, Fabio Vilas-Boas, told Reuters that the Russian sovereign fund and the Gamaleya Institute are dealing directly with ANVISA regarding data from previous tests.
With over 5.3 million confirmed coronavirus cases, Brazil has the third worst outbreak in the world, after the United States and India, which made the country a testing ground in the race to find a vaccine.
Final stage trials are in progress for vaccines under development by Oxford University/AstraZeneca; Sinovac Biotech; Pfizer in partnership with BioNTech; and Janssen, Johnson & Johnson’s pharmaceutical subsidiary.
Source: Reuters