Ready To Receive Sputnik V, Mexico Vaccine Development Project For Latin American Market Also Goes On

Sputnik V Vaccine (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

JAKARTA - Mexico's request to carry out phase III testing of the COVID-19 Sputnik V vaccine was immediately approved by Russia. The Mexican government will receive two thousand doses of the vaccine.

"Mexico has been offered at least two thousand doses of vaccine to carry out phase III trials in Mexico. This is good news because once again we cannot buy time," said Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard, quoted by Reuters, Friday, August 21.

Previously, a number of Mexican officials had visited the Russian Embassy in the country regarding plans for vaccine trials. Ebrard said Mexico fully believes in the quality of Sputnik V.

Agradezco al Embajador de la Federación Rusa, Víctor K. Koronelli, su visita a SRE. Hablamos de la vacuna Sputnik 5. Le externé nuestro interés por aplicar la phase 3 para contar con la vacuna a la brevedad posible en México. pic.twitter.com/9H3Zjd6k2i

- Marcelo Ebrard C. (@m_ebrard) August 19, 2020

Even so, the Mexican government is also working on another vaccine. One of them, Mexico has now worked together to develop a vaccine with AstraZeneca UK and the University of Oxford. In this cooperation, the two parties even projected to supply vaccines to the Latin American market.

Meanwhile, Russia itself will conduct phase III trials in the near future. The plan is for the testing to involve more than 40,000 people and will be supervised by a research agency from outside Russia.

Until now, Sputnik V has attracted the interest of several countries in the world. In fact, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador have expressed their intention to be the first to try.

So far Mexico has confirmed 543,806 cases of COVID-19 transmission. Among them, there were 59,106 cases died.