MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentine president asks Putin to guarantee supply of the Sputnik V vaccine

“The President requested the help of his Russian counterpart to guarantee the supply of vaccines to Argentina and Latin America,” Casa Rosada said

Supply of the Sputnik V Covid-19 vaccine and the possible elaboration of the shots in Argentina were among the issues addressed by Argentine president Alberto Fernandez and Russia's Vladimir Putin during a Tuesday phone conference.

President Fernandez asked Putin to help guarantee the supply of the Russian vaccine to Argentina, which has been one of the first countries to decide immunization with the Sputnik V. Fernandez was planning to have inoculated ten million Argentines by March, but the supply of Russian doses so far has been only 840,000.

According to a readout shared by the Argentine government, president Fernandez said that the results of the immunization campaign with Sputnik V so far were “excellent, with no adverse effects.”

“The President requested the help of his Russian counterpart to guarantee the supply of vaccines to Argentina and Latin America,” Argentina’s government said. Moscow has flagged potential delays as it ramped up production.

Putin said, according to the readout, that production of Sputnik V was being increased so that Argentina would receive the agreed volume of vaccines.

Scientists gave Sputnik V important backing on Tuesday, saying it was almost 92% effective in fighting COVID-19 based on peer-reviewed late-stage trial results published in prestigious medical journal The Lancet.

The Argentine pioneer decision to choose the Russian vaccine was highly controversial, given the lack of transparency and approval from the US and EU regulatory agencies, at least until this week when The Lancet publication, which apparently has helped to lift the standing of the Sputnik V..

Such was the euphoria in the Argentine government that vice president and the real power in the country, Cristina Kirchner, twitted that ”today is a bad day for haters, for those who tried by all means to discredit the government, which since the start of the second pandemic have tried to protect the health of all the Argentines.”