Argentina Sends Plane To Russia To Get Sputnik V Raw Materials - Source

A plane of the state company Aerolineas Argentinas took off from Buenos Aires to Moscow to collect the active ingredient to allow the manufacture of Sputnik V in Argentina, air company sources informed Sputnik

BUENOS AIRES (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 07th June, 2021) A plane of the state company Aerolineas Argentinas took off from Buenos Aires to Moscow to collect the active ingredient to allow the manufacture of Sputnik V in Argentina, air company sources informed Sputnik.

"The plane left at 2:30 am today [05:30 GMT]," the sources said, adding that the Airbus 330-200 is expected to land at Moscow-Sheremetyevo International Airport at midnight local time on Tuesday.

In addition, the plane is supposed to return with a new batch of Sputnik V vaccines. This is the 19th flight that Aerolineas Argentinas has sent to Russia to get vaccine shipments.

Russian President Vladimir Putin along with his Argentine counterpart, Alberto Fernandez, announced on Friday that the Latin American country will begin producing the vaccine developed by the Gamaleya Institute in the coming days.

For its part, the private laboratory Richmond is going to be responsible for mass production of Sputnik V, after the first batch was delivered to the Russian Gamaleya institute that at the end of May confirmed the quality of the vaccine produced in the Latin American country.

Argentina became the first Latin American country both to authorize the use of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine and to proceed to local production. In April, it announced its plans to produce 4-5 million doses of Russia's drug monthly and expects to bring yearly production to 500 million doses.

According to the latest data of the Ministry of Health of Argentina, the country's immunization campaign began at the end of last December, and so far more than 11 million people have been vaccinated, of which more than 3 million have received two vaccine shots.

According to Johns Hopkins University, the death toll in Argentina has risen to 81,214, and the number of detected cases to more than 3.9 million.