Venezuela receives new batch of Sputnik V coronavirus vaccines and favipiravir tablets

Venezuela received at dawn on Thursday a new shipment with 50,000 vaccines against coronavirus of the Russian Sputnik V, informed the Minister of Health, Carlos Alvarado. He also obtained one million tablets of the antiviral favipiravir that arrived from Moscow in a plane of the airline Azur Air.

“We completed the second dose for health personnel and for the elderly,” Alvarado told the state channel VTV upon receiving the new shipment.

He also explained that this batch, the fourth received from Russia for a total of 300,000 vaccines of Sputnik V, will serve to begin to immunize firefighters and civil protection personnel.

“On this plane from the sister Russian Federation also comes a million favipiravir tablets the Venezuelan therapeutic committee included it in our protocols (against covid-19)”, added the minister while indicating that with this million tablets, some 25,000 infected people will be treated.

In addition to the 300,000 Russian vaccines, Venezuela has also received 500,000 doses of the Chinese Sinopharm, bringing the total drugs of this type to 800,000.

The Venezuelan Government has not detailed how many of these vaccines have been applied, although the Health Minister said today that the Russian Sputnik V “more than 200,000” has been placed.

The Venezuelan authorities hope to immunize 70% of the population of their country this year, through vaccines from Cuba, Russia, China and the Covax mechanism coordinated by the World Health Organization (WHO).

Venezuela signed an agreement with Russia last December for 10 million anticovid vaccines and on Saturday the executive vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, reported that the Government paid an advance from the Covax mechanism to acquire more than 11 million of these drugs.

In addition, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro said that his country will produce the Cuban vaccine Abdala, which has not yet completed all the testing phases.

No details of the agreement with China are known.

Venezuela accumulated 1,834 deaths and 178,094 cases of covid-19, according to the government.