Europe has yet to approve the Sputnik vaccine against the coronavirus: political or scientific conflict?

Argentines vaccinated with the two doses of Sputnik V who planned to travel to Europe during the summer which will start here in three days will still not be able to do so: just in september the European Medicines Agency (EMA) could complete the Russian vaccine evaluation process for approval.

EMA sources indicate this date as the closest “Although this does not happen until the end of the year“, They assure, taking into account that the June 10 deadline for the Gamaleya Institute in Moscow to send them the information that the European body is requesting on clinical trials carried out to include Russian in its catalog of approved vaccines.

Sputnik V (Gam-COVID-Vac) is produced by two institutions: the National Center for Epidemiology and Microbiology in Gamaleya and the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), which belongs to the government of Vladimir Putin and is in charge of economic and commercial rights.

According to the RDIF, “it depends on the EMA decide the times in the approval process, but we hope that it will take place in the next two months ”.

Have EMA approval this is essential so that those who have completed the coronavirus vaccination schedule with one of the approved sera – and do not have a European passport – can travel to major destinations in the European Union without any type of sanitary control.

“A political stake”

“For unknown reasons, the Russian production company did not provide the documentation for the EMA approval and this makes it impossible to proceed with the review leading to the approval,” he said. Bugle the epidemiologist Daniel Lopez Acuña, former director of Health Action in Crisis at the World Health Organization (WHO).

“I think it’s a problem fundamentally political with some scientific aspects, ”he adds.

For López Acuña, “the Geopolitical context of the “cold war” between the European Union and Russia ”.

And he adds: “I believe that in this type of process, WHO should play a role. a role of harmonization much bigger than the one he is running ”.

In early June, during his short-lived visit to Argentina, Spanish President Pedro Sánchez spoke out on the measure preventing Argentines vaccinated with Sputnik from traveling to Europe.

“This is one of the debates we have in the European Union,” Sánchez said in Buenos Aires. What you have to do is apply a huge dose of common sense. Although they are not vaccines approved on the European continent, they are vaccines and should not be an obstacle to mobility between continents or to entry into Europe ”.

But Sánchez’s good intention, for now, It is not more than that.

He himself, in mid-May, announced with euphoria at the Madrid tourism fair: “People from all countries with which there is not complete freedom of movement will be able to enter Spain as long as they have a certificate of having received the complete vaccination. calendar authorized by the European Medicines Union or by the World Health Organization ”.

Argentines, for now, to continue to wait.

Madrid. Corresponding