A Swiss biotechnology company will manufacture the Russian “Sputnik V” COVID-19 vaccine at facilities across Italy, the company announced on Monday.
Bloomberg News reported that Adienne Pharma & Biotech has announced an agreement with Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, RDIF, to start production near Milan. The company plans to have several million doses manufactured by the end of 2021, pending Italian regulatory approval.
“Adienne will become our first production in Europe,” said RDIF CEO Kirill Dmitriev, according to Bloomberg. “Launching production in Italy will help meet the growing demand for Sputnik V and will protect many people, not only in Europe, but also in other parts of the world, as the vaccine may be exported later.”
Sputnik V from Russia, which has a reported 92 percent effectiveness rate for preventing COVID-19 infections, is a two-dose vaccine with lower refrigerated storage requirements than those produced by Pfizer and Moderna. It has been authorized for emergency use in at least 20 countries, although it was not authorized in the USA
Nations like China and Russia have been accused by the West of the so-called “vaccine diplomacy”: supplying vaccines to developing countries in an attempt to strengthen ties between their respective governments.
The issue bothered the United States, which did not start supplying vaccines to other countries, but chose to work with allies, including Australia and Japan, to contain the growing reach of these countries.
Three vaccines for COVID-19 are currently authorized for emergency use in the United States: Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson’s and Moderna’s. Some states across the country still report problems in obtaining a supply large enough to distribute to residents at a reasonable rate.
President biden
Joe BidenLawmakers, activists remember civil rights icons to mark ‘Bloody Sunday’. Fauci predicts that high school students will receive coronavirus vaccines this fall. Biden appoints female generals whose promotions were supposedly postponed by Trump MORE promised last week that the United States would have enough vaccine doses for all American adults who wanted one by the end of May.