The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela received this Saturday a first batch of 100,000 Sputnik-V vaccines; as part of a total of 10 million doses planned to reach the country; a fact with which several of the agreements between the South American and the Eurasian nation are consolidated, in order to continue guaranteeing the Venezuelan people the fundamental right to health.
In a transmission of the State channel, Venezolana de Televisión (VTV), the arrival of the Conviasa aircraft around 2pm this Saturday, at the Simón Bolívar International Airport in Maiquetia was known.
On behalf of the Bolivarian Government, the Executive Vice-president of the Republic, Delcy Rodríguez, led the ceremony to receive the vaccines, in the company of the Minister of Foreign Relations of Venezuela, Jorge Arreaza; the Minister of Health, Carlos Alvarado; and top officials of the Russian embassy in Venezuela, the Vice-president expressed her gratitude to the President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, as well as his government and the Russian people.
“Russia has extended a friendly and supportive hand to Venezuela, a country under siege” as confirmed (yesterday) by the rapporteur of the United Nations (UN), Alena Douhan, when corroborating the impact of sanctions in the social and economic field of the country, scenario that has also negatively influenced the health area.
During the month of September 2020, based on the instructions issued by the Venezuelan Head of State, Nicolás Maduro, the Venezuelan authorities signed several agreements with the Russian nation, in order to guarantee rights in the health field, against the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
At the beginning of October, the first batch of the Russian vaccine “Sputnik -V” for phase 3 of the clinical trial against COVID-19, arrived in the country as part of the agreement between the People’s Power Ministry for Health (MPPS) and the Moscow Gamaleya Epidemiology and Microbiology Research Center, thus becoming Venezuela the first country in Latin America to receive this vaccine.
Sputnik-V is the first vaccine approved in the world on August 11, 2020, after less than two months of human testing, an achievement celebrated by Moscow.
Sputnik-V consists of two doses that are applied with an interval of 21 days. The first is based on human adenovirus type 26 and the second is based on recombinant human adenovirus type 5. “Sputnik-V” is among the top 3 vaccines against Coronavirus in terms of the number of approvals received worldwide.