Earlier in December, Argentine President Alberto Fernandez said that Buenos Aires had signed a contract with Russia for the supply of the Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine and expected to vaccinate 10 million people in the January-February period. In early November, the president told Sputnik that Argentina would receive 25 million doses of the Russian vaccine, of which 10 million doses will arrive in December and 15 million doses in early January.
"It is very possible that in the near future we will be able to produce Sputnik V as we are producing the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine. We are very open to it," Nicolini said.
According to the official, the Argentine government is seeking to obtain the technology and become the producer of the vaccine.
"So, it is an opportunity, it is being analyzed and we hope it will happen," he added.
In November, Argentine businessman Hugo Sigman, a Mabxcience laboratory stakeholder, said that the laboratory would produce between 150 and 250 million doses of the vaccine against COVID-19 developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca.
In August, Sputnik V became the first COVID-19 vaccine registered in Russia and the world. The vaccine is currently going through phase 3 trials in Russia, as well as in Belarus, the United Arab Emirates and Venezuela. The relevant agreements have also been reached with India, Brazil and Hungary. Sputnik V is over 95 percent effective based on preliminary data obtained 42 days after the first dose (corresponds with 21 days after the second dose). There were no unexpected adverse events during the trials.