The Russian Sputnik V vaccine against Covid-19 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.
"The vaccine will be produced from July 2021 in the factories of Adienne (Italian-Swiss pharmaceutical company Editor's note) in Lombardy, in Caponago, near Monza", in northern Italy, said Stefano Maggi, advisor press release from the President of the Chamber of Commerce Vincenzo Trani, in a telephone interview.
"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 ”.
Orders in Hungary, Czech Republic and Slovakia
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".
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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 ordered from Russia.
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"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", explains Stefano Maggi,
91.6% effective against symptomatic forms of the disease
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.
Besides Sputnik V, those of Novavax and CureVac are also under review.
Contacted by AFP, the Italian Ministry of Health declined to comment on this announcement.
The Adienne company was not immediately available for comment
