Venezuela received this Tuesday at the Simón Bolívar international airport in Maiquetía, La Guaira state, a plane arriving from Russia with 1.4 million new doses of the single-dose Sputnik Light vaccine, with which Caracas plans to continue immunizing the Venezuelan population.
The information was advanced by the Vice Minister for Health, Marisela Bermúdez; who also explained that these vaccines are expected to start the beginning of their administration to the population for next year.
Bremúdez explained that “these doses of the vaccines come to be the reinforcement to avoid complications and deaths from this dreadful SARS-CoV-2 virus and its variants such as Omicron.”
On Monday, the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) had announced the shipment to Venezuela of 7 million doses of Sputnik Light, in what would be the largest global delivery of the Russian single-dose vaccine to date.
According to the RDIF, demand for Sputnik Light is increasing as more countries use it as a standalone vaccine and universal booster for other vaccines, including against the recent Omicron variant of the virus that causes Covid-19.
Sputnik Light is based on human adenovirus serotype 26 (the first component of Sputnik V). It has already been registered in more than 20 countries as a standalone single-shot vaccine and a universal booster for other vaccines.
Last weekend, the first shipment of this vaccine arrived in the country, for the reinforcement plan that begins on January 1; In this sense, the first batch brought at least 2.6 million doses, and in a second shipment at the beginning of last week, with more than 1.5 million.
