The Russian Sputnik V vaccine will be produced in Italy from July, the Italian-Russian Chamber of Commerce told AFP on Tuesday, a first in the European Union which has not yet authorized it.
Read also: Covid-19: Sputnik V, a very political Russian vaccine
"
The vaccine will be produced from July 2021 at the factories of (the Italian-Swiss pharmaceutical company) Adienne in Lombardy in Caponago near Monza
", in northern Italy, said Stefano Maggi, advisor to press of the President of the Chamber of Commerce, in an interview by telephone.
10 million doses produced before 2022
"
Ten million doses will be produced between July 1 and January 1, 2022
", he said, stressing that this is the "
first agreement at European level for the production on the territory of the EU of Sputnik vaccine
”.
Sputnik V is not yet authorized in the European Union, but last week reached a key milestone for its deployment in this area, with the start of its review by the Amsterdam-based European Medicines Agency (EMA). .
After this announcement, the Russian authorities said they were ready to provide vaccines to 50 million Europeans from June.
Arguing that its vaccine is now validated in 46 countries, the Russian sovereign wealth fund owner of the vaccine again criticized the MEA on Tuesday for having "
postponed for months
" the validation process of Sputnik.
Russia also strongly denounced Tuesday the words of an official of the EAJ, who compared the emergency authorization of the Sputnik V vaccine by certain European countries to "
Russian roulette
".
Read also: Urgently authorizing Sputnik V is playing "Russian roulette" according to an official from the European Medicines Agency
Impatient in the face of a validation deemed too slow, several EU countries have also turned to vaccines not yet approved, such as Hungary, which began administering the Russian vaccine to its population last month.
The Czech Republic and Slovakia have also placed orders from Russia.
"
If the vaccine is not authorized in Europe by July 1, 2021, the doses produced will be bought back by the Russian sovereign wealth fund and distributed in countries where the Sputnik vaccine is already authorized,
" Stefano told AFP Maggi,
First greeted with skepticism in the West, the first Russian vaccine against Covid-19 has since convinced experts, especially after the publication of results in the specialist journal The Lancet, according to which the effectiveness of the Russian vaccine is 91.6 % against symptomatic forms of the disease.
For the moment, three vaccines are authorized in the European Union: those of Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and AstraZeneca.
A fourth, that of Johnson & Johnson, is subject to a request for authorization.
In addition to Sputnik V, two others, those of Novavax and CureVac, are under review.
Contacted by AFP, the Italian Ministry of Health declined to comment on this announcement.
Adienne was not immediately reachable for a comment
