The Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF, Russia’s sovereign wealth fund) and Argentina’s Laboratorios Richmond SACIF pharmaceutical company today announced the Sputnik V vaccine produced at Company’s facilities will become available for vaccination in Argentina starting from this week following successful quality control of test samples at the Gamaleya Center on August 3.

Sucessful start of production of the second component of Sputnik V by Laboratorios Richmond is an important example of technological cooperation between Russia and Argentina to localize the production of one of the best vaccines against coronavirus in the world. Laboratorios Richmond is expected to produce over 3 million doses of the second component of Sputnik V in August. This week the Company will start supplying the Government of Argentina with locally produced Sputnik V vaccine including 150,000 doses of the second component to protect the population.

Argentina was the first country in Latin America both to authorize Sputnik V and to start its production. The vaccine was registered in the country under the emergency use authorization procedure and vaccination against coronavirus with the Russian vaccine started on 29 December 2020. RDIF and partners facilitated the technology transfer to Laboratorios Richmond for the local production of the vaccine with the first batch manufactured in April 2021.

To date, the Sputnik V vaccine has been registered in 69 countries globally with a total population of over 3.7 bn people. The data obtained by regulators of a number of countries during the vaccination of the population, including in Argentina, Serbia, Bahrain, Hungary, Mexico, San Marino, UAE and others, demonstrates that Sputnik V is one of the safest and most effective vaccines against coronavirus.

Sputnik V is based on a proven and well-studied platform of human adenoviral vectors and uses two different vectors for the two shots in a course of vaccination, providing immunity with a longer duration than vaccines using the same delivery mechanism for both shots.

Kirill Dmitriev, CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, said:

Thanks to the partnership between RDIF and Laboratorios Richmond people in Argentina will obtain access to locally produced Sputnik V vaccine. It will increase the scale of vaccination reducing time and logistic costs. Localization of production of Sputnik V in a short time frame is a joint success of Russia and Argentina providing for successful implementation of national vaccination programs also by other countries of the region using one of the world’s safest and most effective vaccines against coronavirus.

Marcelo Figueiras, President of Laboratorios Richmond, said:

We at Richmond are very happy and proud to partner with the Russian Direct Investment Fund and the Gamaleya Center to produce the Sputnik V vaccine in Argentina. We are proud of our scientific team that worked jointly with Gamaleya´s experts to ensure we can produce the vaccines that will help us save Argentine lives. Today is a very important day because we have reached a milestone, which prompts us to continue our hard work to achieve more vaccines for more people. Collaborating within this process helps our people to get access to the Sputnik V vaccine that has shown one of the highest efficacy and safety profiles among other advantages.