EU to support vaccine manufacturing efforts in Africa — report; Sputnik Light approved for use in Venezuela – Endpoints News

The EU is ex­pect­ed to back an ef­fort to ex­pand vac­cine man­u­fac­tur­ing in Africa, un­named of­fi­cials told the Fi­nan­cial Times. 

On­ly 1% of Covid-19 vac­cines ad­min­is­tered world­wide have been giv­en in Africa — down from 2% a few weeks ago, the WHO re­port­ed on Fri­day. The coun­try nor­mal­ly gets many of its vac­cine dos­es from the Serum In­sti­tute of In­dia, which is now di­vert­ing its Covid-19 shots for do­mes­tic use.

“We’re in a very tough spot when it comes to sup­ply,” Richard Mi­hi­go, Africa’s Im­mu­niza­tion and Vac­cines De­vel­op­ment pro­gram co­or­di­na­tor with the WHO, said in a state­ment. “What is cru­cial for Africa is that we ur­gent­ly use all the dos­es we have to pro­tect our most vul­ner­a­ble pop­u­la­tions.”

At an up­com­ing glob­al health sum­mit in Rome, EC pres­i­dent Ur­su­la von der Leyen is ex­pect­ed to sup­port pro­pos­als to es­tab­lish man­u­fac­tur­ing hubs in Africa, the FT re­port­ed. That sup­port could in­clude di­rect EU aid, and fund­ing from na­tion­al agen­cies and the Eu­ro­pean In­vest­ment Bank, un­named of­fi­cials said. Plus, Brus­sels wants to help build up the African Med­i­cines Agency, which the African Union As­sem­bly adopt­ed a treaty to es­tab­lish in 2019.

“The EU’s in­tent is gen­uine — I don’t think it is nec­es­sar­i­ly geopo­lit­i­cal. They are host­ing the glob­al health sum­mit and clear­ly they want to do a cou­ple of big things,” said Ayoade Alak­i­ja, co-chair of the Africa Vac­cine De­liv­ery Al­liance, per the FT.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­port, the coun­tries are con­sid­er­ing three sites, in­clud­ing the In­sti­tut Pas­teur in Sene­gal, and in Rwan­da and South Africa.

The EU has said in­creas­ing vac­cine pro­duc­tion is more use­ful than waiv­ing in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty rights on vac­cines, which Pfiz­er has vo­cal­ly op­posed. — Nicole De­Feud­is 

Sput­nik Light ap­proved for use in Venezuela

The sin­gle-jab ver­sion of Rus­sia’s Covid-19 vac­cine, Sput­nik Light, has been ap­proved in Venezuela, the Russ­ian Di­rect In­vest­ment Fund an­nounced. The coun­try is the sec­ond to ap­prove the sin­gle-dose ver­sion, as An­go­la ap­proved the vac­cine for use last week.

The RDIF an­nounced on May 6 that a sin­gle-shot ver­sion of the Sput­nik V vac­cine has been ap­proved by the Russ­ian reg­u­la­to­ry of­fi­cials. The Venezue­lan ap­proval will help ac­cel­er­ate the coun­try’s vac­ci­na­tion cam­paign, RDIF head Kir­ill Dmitriev said to Reuters. In Jan­u­ary 2021, the two-dose Sput­nik V vac­cine was al­so ap­proved for use in Venezuela un­der the emer­gency use au­tho­riza­tion pro­ce­dure.

Sput­nik Light has proved 79% ef­fi­ca­cy, the RDIF claims, ac­cord­ing to da­ta from 28 days af­ter the in­jec­tion was ad­min­is­tered. Vac­cine mak­ers al­so say that there were no se­ri­ous side ef­fects from the vac­cine. The study of re­al-world da­ta has gar­nered skep­ti­cism, as Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin rolled out vac­cine use be­fore it cleared any safe­ty stud­ies.

Sput­nik V was al­so ap­proved in Ecuador Sat­ur­day, the RDIF an­nounced. That marks the 66th coun­try in which the jab has been ap­proved. — Josh Sul­li­van

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