Russia and Germany discuss joint production of c …

The President of Russia, Vladimir Poutine, and the German Chancellor Angela Merkel evaluate the possibility of co-producing vaccines against coronaviruses. As reported by the Kremlin press service, the two leaders had a telephone dialogue during which they discussed this possibility, without however specifying which vaccine it would be: while Russia was developing Sputnik V, the German laboratory BioNtech worked with the North American pharmaceutical company Pfizer. .

“The issues of mutual cooperation in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic were discussed, focusing on the possibility of joint production of vaccines in the future. It was agreed to continue contacts on this issue between the ministries health and other specialized structures of the two countries “, indicates the statement released by the Kremlin.

Until, in Russia, around a million people were vaccinated and shipments were sent to Argentina, Belarus and Serbia. In addition, countries like Venezuela, Mexico and Bolivia have ordered doses of Sputnik V.

However, Russian authorities recognized that do not have the means to produce on a large scale to meet the massive demand for vaccines. So the Sputnik V will also be produced in India -which promised to contribute 100 million doses- and agreements were signed with Brazil, China and South Korea.

For its part, Germany already started this saturday vaccination campaign with the drug produced by Pfizer and BioNtech. Until Monday, more than 264,000 elderly and healthcare workers received the first dose of the vaccine.

Even like that, local media criticize government for supposedly slow vaccination process, even in Germany, the pace is faster than in other European countries such as France or Spain.

The Bild newspaper, one of the most read, accuses Merkel’s administration of having “relied too much on the European Union” in the vaccination strategy and the delivery of doses, and to favor the BioNTech-Pfizer product to the detriment of the vaccine manufactured by Moderna.

Although the German government’s management during the first wave of the coronavirus stood out, the daily Die Welt underlines that this new stage is a “big failure” and criticizes “hesitations, conflicts of competition and strategic errors”.

According to a survey carried out by the local consultancy firm Civey, 44% of Germans are not convinced of the strategy of the vaccination campaign, although 40% of the population think otherwise.

Furthermore, throughout the pandemic, Germany – like most countries – has had to deal with mobilization of groups against the use of masks, anti-vaccines and adherents to conspiracy theories.

In this context and with a clear increase in cases, The Chancellor meets the heads of regional governments of the 16 federated states this Tuesday. They are expected to accept an extension of the sanitary restrictions in force in Germany from mid-December to January 10. They will also decide whether to keep the schools open or whether they decide to close them to avoid contagion.

Last week Merkel said in her New Year’s speech that there could be an extension of restrictions and that “these days and weeks are going to be tough times for our country.” “And it will be for a while. We still have a long time to go before overcoming the pandemic. Winter is and will remain harsh“he added.

This Tuesday, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) of virology registered 11,897 new infections reported by German health offices in the last 24 hours and 944 deaths from the disease.

The maximum number of deaths was recorded on December 30 with 1,129 deaths and the maximum number of infections on December 18 with 33,777 cases.

Since the start of the pandemic, 1,787,410 confirmed infections have been recorded in Germany while 35,518 people died from causes related to the disease and 1,424,700 were cured.