BERLIN, May 30. / TASS /: The European Medicines Agency (EMA) needs to speed up the certification of Russia’s Sputnik V COVID-19 jab, German federal state of Bavaria’s Prime Minister Markus Soeder stated on Sunday in the Bild am Sontag newspaper.
"The vaccination pace cannot be slowed down. First of all, we need to fast-track the process of Sputnik V’s [registration in the EU]," the Bavarian prime minister said. According to him, this process cannot be delayed "solely for ideological reasons".
Bavaria expects to receive 2.5 mln doses of the Russian vaccine if it is approved by the EMA. At the same time, the report says the jab is likely to be registered only by September.
Germany has repeatedly expressed its readiness to use vaccines developed outside the EU, in particular, the Russian Sputnik V. Chancellor Angela Merkel and Health Minister Jens Spahn named a key condition: the drug has to be approved by the EMA.
The Russian Sputnik V vaccine has already been registered in the countries, home to over 3 bln people. The jab efficiency was 97.6% based on the analysis of COVID-19 cases among Russians vaccinated with both components of Sputnik V carried out from December 5, 2020, to March 31, 2021. On March 4, the European Medicines Agency launched a rolling review of Sputnik V.
