BERLIN, May 18. /TASS/. The EU should approve Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine against coronavirus, Peter Altmaier, head Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy said on Tuesday.
He made this statement in the video address to the participants of the German-Russian conference Potsdam Meetings.
"We are in constant exchange with Russia on production of vaccines. Both Germany with BioNTech and Russia with Sputnik V are among the pioneers of vaccines against coronavirus. Thus, we have another point for close cooperation for the benefit of people. Of course, Sputnik V must receive the approval in the European Union, like all other [effective] medicines, drugs and vaccines," he said.
Germany has repeatedly expressed its readiness to use vaccines developed outside the EU, in particular Russia’s Sputnik V. Both German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the head of the Ministry of Health Jens Spahn named the vaccine’s certification by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) as the key condition for it.
Russia was the world’s first to register an anti-coronavirus vaccine in August 2020. The vaccine, developed by the Gamaleya National Research Center for Epidemiology and Microbiology of the Russian Health Ministry, was given the name Sputnik V. It is a vector vaccine based on the human adenovirus
The vaccine’s efficacy proved to be 97.6% based on the analysis of the coronavirus incidence data among Russians inoculated with both shots of the vaccine in a period from December 5, 2020 to March 31, 20201.
The vaccine has been registered in around 61 world nations, with an overall population of more than three billion.
The European Medicines Agency said on March 4 it had begun the Sputnik V evaluation procedures to look at its compliance with the EU efficacy, safety and quality standards. The Agency anticipates that the registration of the Russian vaccine could be over by late May.