Igor Matovich
The Prime Minister of Slovakia, Igor Matovic, criticized the country's President Zuzana Chaputova because of her disapproval of the supply of the Russian vaccine against the Sputnik V coronavirus to the country. He wrote about this on his Facebook.
“Hundreds of people die every day, and some consider the biggest problem in Slovakia that we allowed ourselves to supply two million doses of effective vaccine for the people of Slovakia, because it is from Russia. Seriously? Have we gone so deep that we do not care at all about the health and life of people? Do we really want to prevent people from being vaccinated with a drug they trust? ”He wrote.
Matovic quarreled in absentia with Čaputova, who had previously criticized the use of the Russian vaccine in Slovakia. She pointed out that the drug has not yet passed the necessary licensing procedures in the EU, and suggested asking for the registration of Sputnik V with the European medical regulator.
Earlier, Matovich jokingly said that he allegedly promised the Russian state in exchange for the supply of vaccine to give the Transcarpathian Ukraine. Then he clarified that he did not promise anything to the Russians, and they did not demand anything from him. This statement was disapproved in Kiev, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry demanded an official apology from Bratislava, and Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba offered Matovic to exchange the vaccine for several regions of Slovakia.
Slovakia received the first batch of Russian-made Sputnik V vaccine on 1 March. The first million doses are expected to be delivered during March and April. Vaccinations in the country will begin within two weeks.
Sputnik V was developed by the Russian Gamaleya Research Center for Electrochemistry and became the world's first officially registered vaccine against coronavirus. It was created on the basis of another adenovirus in which the coronavirus gene is embedded. When it enters the cells, it forms proteins in them – they cause an immune response and promote the development of antibodies.
