MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Russia's Putin invites Argentine President over to discuss bilateral cooperation

Putin wants to discuss other issues with Fernández, besides the vaccine

Russia's President Vladimir Putin Monday held a phone conversation with his Argentine colleague Alberto Fernández, whom he invited over to Moscow for talks to advance cooperation issues.

Putin called Fernández to inquire about the latter's health, after announcing during the Easter weekend he had tested positive for the covid-19 virus and wished him a speedy recovery.

Fernández in return thanked Russia for supplying his country with coronavirus Sputnik V vaccines.

The Argentine president insisted that the vaccination campaign was yielding excellent results and was going on without any serious complications. Besides Sputnik V, Argentina uses the China-manufactured Sinopharm and India's Covishield.

“The vaccine works. It must be administered. If I had not had the vaccine, I would have felt very bad now,” said Fernández, who received the two doses of the Sputnik V in January.

Russia was the first in the world to register an anti-coronavirus vaccine on August 11, 2020. The jab, developed by the Russian Health Ministry’s Gamaleya National Research Center for Epidemiology and Microbiology, was dubbed Sputnik V. It is a vector vaccine based on the human adenovirus.

In early February 2020, The Lancet, a world-acclaimed medical journal, published the results of the third phase of Sputnik V’s clinical tests. The jab has shown itself to be among the world’s safest and most efficient preparations. Thus, its efficacy is estimated at 91.6% and 91.8% among volunteers older than 60. Ninety-eight per cent of volunteers developed antibodies to the coronavirus.

Putin once again pledged his country's commitment on making the Sputnik V vaccine available as per the agreements signed for that purpose. But he underlined that other cooperation issues between the two nations will be on the agenda when he meets Fernández.

The Argentina Casa Rosada presidential palace also issued a statement reporting the arrival Sunday at the Ezeiza International Airport of Aerolineas Argentinas flight AR1069 from Moscow, carrying 497,745 doses of component 1 of Sputnik V for a country which that same day had reported 13,667 new covid-19 infections and 56,471 deaths.

Fernández also received messages of support on social media wishing him a prompt recovery from various regional leaders, such as Sebastián Piñera (Chile), Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez (Cuba), Mario Abdo (Paraguay) and Andrés Manuel López Obrador (México) as well as former Presidents Evo Morales (Bolivia) and Rafael Correa (Ecuador).