PRAGUE, February 28, 2021(BSS/TASS)-Czech Republic counts on supplies of
Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine against coronavirus in the near future. The
country’s President Milos Zeman told the local CNN Prima on Saturday that he
had sent a letter to his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin with a request to
deliver the vaccine to the republic as soon as possible.
“If I am correctly informed, my request will be satisfied,” Zeman said.
“Of course, we will need certification [for Sputnik V], not necessarily by
the European Medicines Agency. To me a certificate from the Czech State
Institute for Drug Control will be enough,” he said.
The host of the TV program said that Zeman had turned to Putin about the
vaccine following the agreement with the Prime Minister of the republic,
Andrej Babis. The head of government had repeatedly inquired about the
possibility of obtaining Sputnik V.
Earlier on Saturday, the Czech Ministry of Health announced that the
coronavirus pandemic in the country has already killed 20,194 people.
At the end of the week, the country ranked the first in the world in terms
of the number of new infections per 1 million of population. The total number
of infected people in the Czech Republic, where 10.46 million people live, is
1,227,595.
Czech Republic launched the vaccination against coronavirus on December 27,
2020. To date, 644,300 inhabitants got the vaccine. The republic received the
vaccines produced by the Pfizer (the U.S.) and BioNTech (Germany) as well as
by Moderna (he U.S.) and British-Swedish company AstraZeneca. The Czech
authorities are interested in the early registration of Sputnik V by the
European Medicines Agency.
Sputnik V is one of the world’s top three coronavirus vaccines in terms of
the number of approvals issued by government regulators. Sputnik V had been
approved earlier in Russia, Belarus, Argentina, Bolivia, Serbia, Algeria,
Palestine, Venezuela, Paraguay, Turkmenistan, Hungary, UAE, Iran, Republic of
Guinea, Tunisia, Armenia, Mexico, Nicaragua, Republika Srpska (entity of
Bosnia and Herzegovina), Lebanon, Myanmar, Pakistan, Mongolia, Bahrain,
Montenegro, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Gabon,
San Marino, and Ghana.