By Maximilian Heath and Anton Zverev
BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) – Russia dispatched 240,000 doses of its Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine on Thursday, with most heading to Argentina and the rest bound for Bolivia, Argentine health and airline officials said.
Bolivia, which an airline official said would take delivery of 20,000 doses from the consignment, will be the second Latin American country after Argentina to rollout the Russian vaccine.
Argentina has already taken of delivery of two consignments, each with 300,000 shots. An Aerolineas Argentinas spokesman told Reuters the latest consignment of 220,000 doses was equally split between first and second shots of the two-stage vaccine.
The Argentine deliveries fall short of the 5 million doses the health authorities had said they expected to receive in January from Russia.
An Aerolineas Argentina flight from Moscow carrying the latest shipment was due to land in Buenos Aires later on Thursday. From there, Bolivia’s BOA national airline was scheduled pick up its share of the shipment to fly to La Paz.
The Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), which markets Sputnik V, and the Gamaleya Research Institute, which developed it, said on Wednesday supplies to Latin America might be delayed by up to three weeks as production capacity was ramped up.
RDIF declined to comment on the latest shipment.
Argentina had not received advanced notice of the size the latest shipment of 220,000 doses before it was sent, health ministry official Carla Vizzotti told state news agency Telam.
“We are super careful until we have confirmation, due to the particular dynamic of the world supply of vaccines,” she said, adding she hoped more would arrive “during the next few days and weeks.”
Argentina has administered 272,323 people with the first dose of the Sputnik V vaccine and 45,710 people with the second dose, ministry figures show. Argentina has also approved the vaccine manufactured by AstraZeneca.
Bolivia’s President Luis Arce wrote on Twitter that the 20,000 doses his country was receiving was more than the 6,000 originally agreed for delivery in January. He said the vaccines would be administered to frontline health workers.
(Reporting by Aislinn Laing; Additional reporting line Polina Nikolskaya, Rinat Sagdiev and Polina Ivanova and Moscow; Editing by Edmund Blair)
