Algeria will produce the Russian Sputnik V vaccine against COVID-19 in September, the Minister of Pharmaceutical Industry, Lotfi Benbahmed, announced on Wednesday.
“In September, we will be ready to produce an Algerian vaccine,” the minister told French-speaking public radio.
The vaccine will be manufactured by the public group Saidal in partnership with the Russian laboratory Gamaleïa which developed the product, said the minister.
This project will see the light of day thanks to the technological transfer provided by the Russians via a digital platform accessible to Algerian experts, and which gathers all the data necessary for the manufacture of Sputnik V.
“Three committees including experts from Saidal, academics, research centers, the Pasteur Institute and ministry executives are currently working hard on the transfer of technology” offered by Russia, assured Mr. Benbahmed.
The production will be done with the participation of an Indian laboratory, the world leader in the matter, we added from the same source without revealing the name of the laboratory.
To date, Algeria has received 80,000 doses of the Sputnik V vaccine with which it launched its vaccination campaign on January 30.
The largest Maghreb country is due to receive 920,000 doses of the Russian vaccine before the end of April, Health Minister Abderahmane Benbouzid said last week.
Algiers also received 50,000 doses of the British AstraZeneca vaccine and 200,000 doses of the Sinopharm vaccine, a donation from China, Algeria’s long-time partner.
And on Thursday, more than 364,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine arrived in the country as part of the Covax mechanism to help underprivileged nations.
Nearly 118,000 contaminations, including 3,112 deaths, have been officially recorded in Algeria since the census of the first case on February 25, 2020, according to the latest report from the Ministry of Health.
