Slovak Government to Decide on Russia's Sputnik V on Wednesday - Health Minister

PRAGUE (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 26th May, 2021) The Slovak government will decide if Russia's coronavirus vaccine Sputnik V will be used in the national vaccination effort on Wednesday, Health Minister Vladimir Lengvarsky said on Tuesday.

On Monday, the Bratislava newspaper Pravda reported, citing Prime Minister Eduard Heger, that the country will begin vaccinating people with the Russian vaccine starting June 1.

"I will sign the decision to use Sputnik V if the majority of the ministers supports it. I am in favor of the European solution. I see that [among the citizens] there is a group of people that prefers solely this vaccine, so in order to raise the percentage of vaccinated people we should resolve this issue [in a positive manner]," Lengvarsky told journalists, noting that there was still the issue of allegedly incomplete documentation from the Russian side.

The Russian vaccine caused a political scandal in Slovakia as former Prime Minister Igor Matovic initiated the decision in February to purchase the vaccine without approval by the European Medicines Agency and without informing President Zuzana Caputova or their cabinet colleagues.

This did not sit well with other ministers, who left the government and called on Matovic and then-Health Minister Marek Krajci to resign, which they did. The reshuffled government was approved on April 1 with Matovic as the finance minister.

Sputnik V, the world's first registered coronavirus vaccine, has been approved for emergency use in 65 countries across the globe. The efficacy of the vaccine stands at 97.6%, based on the latest analysis of data on the post-vaccination infection percentage among 3.8 million vaccinated Russians. It is higher than the 91.6% efficacy shown in an interim analysis from the trial published in The Lancet in early February.