Slovakia has decided to buy Russian-produced Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine without waiting for it to be approved by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and has received the first batch on Monday, Slovak Prime Minister Igor Matovic told the press in Kosice Airport on Monday
PRAGUE (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 01st March, 2021) Slovakia has decided to buy Russian-produced Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine without waiting for it to be approved by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and has received the first batch on Monday, Slovak Prime Minister Igor Matovic told the press in Kosice Airport on Monday.
"We have started to buy Sputnik V vaccines from Russia without waiting for its registration with the EMA because we have no time to waste, there are not enough vaccines in the country, every day dozens of our citizens die from COVID-19," prime minister said.
He also noted that this deal will help speed up the vaccination process in Slovakia.
Mass inoculation campaign in Slovakia has been underway since the end of December 2020. By Monday morning, 305,800 people received the first dose, 133,300 were fully vaccinated. The country has used Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna and AstraZeneca vaccines, but started to encounter delays and other issues with the deliveries. On February 19, Matovic told the press that he reached an agreement with Russia to receive shipments of Sputnik V by mid-summer.
Russia's Sputnik V vaccine was registered by the Russian Health Ministry in August 2020, becoming the world's first vaccine against coronavirus. The vaccine's effectiveness after the third phase of the clinical trials was proved to be 91.6 percent, as published in the Lancet medical journal. Sputnik V vaccine is already approved for use in over 30 countries.
