PARIS (Reuters) – France does not have the manufacturing capacity currently to produce Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine against COVID-19, an official with the economy ministry said on Tuesday.
Russia’s vaccine will be produced in Europe for the first time after a commercial deal to make it in Italy was signed by Moscow-based sovereign wealth fund RDIF and Swiss-based pharmaceutical company Adienne.
“We have no specific doctrine or preconceptions regarding the vaccine,” the French official said in response to a question on whether France would push for a similar agreement.
“But in the near term, all manufacturing capacities are saturated with other vaccine production,” he said.
The agreement between Italy and Russia, which will need approval from Italian regulators before production can commence, has been confirmed by both RDIF and the Italian-Russian chamber of commerce.
It marks the latest evidence that some EU companies are not willing to wait for the EU’s own regulator — the European Medicines Agency (EMA) — to approve Sputnik V before pushing ahead with their own plans.
Scientists said the Russian vaccine was almost 92% effective, based on peer-reviewed late-stage trial results published in The Lancet medical journal last month.
Sputnik V has already been approved or is being assessed for approval in three EU member states – Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic.
(Reporting by Matthias Blamont and Caroline Paillez; editing by Jason Neely and Bernadette Baum)
