Brazil’s União Química completes first batch of Russian Covid-19 Sputnik V vaccine

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – União Química has completed the production of its first batch of the Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine with active ingredients and technology supplied by Russia, the Brazilian pharmaceutical company announced Thursday, May 20.

The vaccine will be exported to neighboring South American countries, as Brazil’s health regulator ANVISA has not authorized the Russian vaccine for domestic use.

Moscow’s Gamaleya Institute, which developed the vaccine, said it was in charge of the quality control of the vaccine’s ingredients, which was bottled at União Química’s unit in the city of Guarulhos, São Paulo.

The plant’s first batch of 100,000 doses was packaged in Spanish-labeled boxes, but the destination countries have not yet been chosen by the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), executives said.

Fernando Marques, chief executive of the Brazilian family-owned company, said that Paraguay, Uruguay and Argentina are interested in buying the vaccine. União Química will be capable of producing 8 million doses per month once ANVISA has approved its use in Brazil, he said.

ANVISA’s approval was deferred because the agency challenged some documents and said it was missing trial data that had been requested from the Russian fund, which is marketing the vaccine.

Marques expects approval in June, and his company will start producing the active ingredient in its biomedical lab in Brasilia, rather than importing it from Russia.

The Russian fund said it has signed Sputnik V production contracts with 20 manufacturing facilities in India, Argentina, South Korea, China, Italy, Serbia, Egypt, Turkey, Belarus, and Kazakhstan.

The vaccine is currently produced in Russia, Serbia, Egypt, Turkey and Argentina, where the first trial batch was produced on April 20 by Richmond Laboratories, the Russian fund said.