President Tebboune, having decided to launch a vaccination campaign, the head of the cardiology service at the CHU Nafissa Hamoud in Algiers, explained why the Spoutnik V vaccine is close to the criteria for Algeria. While praising “its industrial capabilities”, he noted the possibility of manufacturing it locally.
Algeria has signed “a simple mutual agreement contract with a Russian laboratory to acquire the vaccine against the coronavirus”, Sputnik V, government spokesman Amar Belhimer announced on December 30 on national television.
Although contacts with other foreign laboratories are also in progress, Professor Djamel-Eddine Nibouche, head of the cardiology service at the Nafissa Hamoud University Hospital in Algiers, explained to Le Point magazine why the Russian vaccine interested Algeria.
“Personally, I would have opted for the Russian vaccine, a senior state official told us last week, for the simple reason that we have confidence in the industrial and technology transfer capacities of the Russians,” he declares.
Possibility of manufacturing it locally
In addition, as Djamel-Eddine Nibouche clarified, the Sputnik V vaccine does not require logistical cumbersome storage at very low temperatures and offers the Algerian authorities the possibility of manufacturing it locally.
“The Russian Direct Investment Fund offers various forms of cooperation, namely direct acquisition, technology transfer, joint production, and participation in phase III clinical trials,” said the Russian ambassador in early December to Algiers, Igor Beliaev.
Sputnik V, the world’s first anti-Covid-19 vaccine, was licensed in Russia in August. The director of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, Kirill Dmitriev, said on December 14 that the third phase of the trials evaluated its effectiveness at 91.4%.
