SAO PAULO (Reuters) – Brazil’s Paran state government plans to sign an agreement with Russia to produce a newly launched COVID-19 vaccine, the head of the Parana Technology Institute (Tecpar) said on Tuesday in comments broadcast on cable news channel GloboNews.
Earlier on Tuesday, President Vladimir Putin said Russia had become the first country in the world to grant regulatory approval to a COVID-19 vaccine after less than two months of human testing, a move hailed by Moscow as evidence of its scientific prowess.
The vaccine still has to complete final trials, raising concerns among some experts at the speed of its approval, but the Russian business conglomerate Sistema has said it expects to put it into mass production by the end of the year.
Kirill Dmitriev, head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, said the vaccine, which will be marketed under the name ‘Sputnik V’ on foreign markets, will be produced in part in Brazil.
Brazil has the world’s second largest outbreak of the coronavirus, after the United States.
(Reporting by Eduardo Simoes; Editing by Brad Haynes and Christian Plumb)
