Marcelo Figueiras, CEO of Argentina’s Richmond Labs, announced June 30 that the first 450,000 doses of Sputnik V’s first dose should be ready to be administered by next week, once Russia’s Gamaleya Institute and the national ANMAT regulatory agency give their final OK on the vaccine’s quality. Another 525,000 doses of the first dose are in production as well, so that, Figueiras reports, there will be a total of 1 million doses available very shortly. In addition, on July 5, Richmond will start production of another million of dose two, to be available in the week or two following that.
Initially, the goal is to produce 2 million Sputnik V doses a month, but then quickly increase that to 5 million a month, El Cronista Comercial reported. Telam news agency added Figueiras’ comments that local production of the vaccine “is paving the way toward health sovereignty” in terms of vaccine production in Argentina. He estimates that once Richmond’s new state-of-the-art plant is completed in Pilar, by early 2022 it will be able to produce 500 million doses annually. Add to this the 150-200,000 doses of AstraZeneca vaccine being produced by Argentina’s mAbxience lab, in conjunction with a Mexican lab. As Figueiras points out, with this production capability, Argentina can not only become self-sufficient in vaccine production, but also become a supplier to the rest of the region. To date, 17 million people have received one dose in Argentina, and 4 million are fully vaccinated. The total population is 45 million.
