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Venezuela received a shipment of Russian vaccines against the new coronavirus this Friday, in order to participate in the clinical trial phase, the government of Nicolás Maduro reported.
“We are receiving a first batch of Sputnik V vaccines (…). Two thousand people will be included in this trial in Venezuela,” said the Minister of Health, Carlos Alvarado, during a formal ceremony at the Maiquetía international airport, the main air terminal in the Caribbean country.
Vaccinations will begin this month in Caracas, added the official, without specifying an exact date for it.
Russia became the first country to approve a vaccine against COVID-19 on August 11, which it named Sputnik V in honor of the first satellite launched into space in 1957. However, the announcement was received with skepticism in the community international, as a detailed study has not been published that allows to independently verify the results of the first tests.
Phase 3 of the trials is currently underway (the human testing stage), in which according to Russia more than 40,000 volunteers are being vaccinated.
Already in August the Maduro administration had announced that Venezuela would participate in this phase following agreements with the Nikolai Gamaleya Research Center for Epidemiology and Microbiology, in charge of producing Sputnik V, and Moscow. He said then aspire to produce the vaccine despite its serious economic crisis.
“As soon as this phase 3 ends, both in Russia and Venezuela, the mass production process will begin,” Alvarado insisted on Friday.
Russia has been one of Maduro’s main allies in the face of international pressure led by the United States to try to displace him from power. Washington ignores the re-election of the socialist ruler in 2018, considering it fraudulent, and supports the opposition parliamentary leader Juan Guaidó, recognized as president in charge of Venezuela by fifty countries.
Caracas and Moscow have had close relations since the era of the late former president Hugo Chávez (1999-2013), who bought weapons and military equipment from him for hundreds of millions of dollars amid an oil boom that ended in 2014.
As of Thursday, 76,029 COVID-19 infections had been registered in Venezuela, with 635 deaths, according to official figures, questioned by the opposition and organizations such as Human Rights Watch, which maintain that they hide a much worse situation.
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