COVID-19 Booster: Venezuela Receives 2.6 Million Sputnik Light Doses

In the morning hours of Saturday, December 11, the first batch of Sputnik Light vaccine doses arrived in Venezuela from Russia. This was a batch of 2.6 million doses that will function as booster jabs for the Venezuelan government’s COVID-19 vaccination campaign that has already immunized more than 80% of the Venezuelan population.

Sputnik Light is a single-dose vaccine developed in Russia, financed by the Russian Direct Investment Fund. The vaccine is currently being used to boost immunity in countries such as Russia, Nicaragua, Mexico, Argentina, China, and India, amongst others.

According to the Russian Direct Investment Fund, “the addition of Sputnik Light as part of a ‘vaccine cocktail’ provides a higher antibody count by day 14 after its administration as a second dose, compared to the original homogeneous regimens (the same vaccine in the first and second dose) of each of the available vaccines.”

The Sputnik Light shipment to Venezuela is part of the cooperation agreements signed between the Venezuelan and Russian governments, in the framework of which Russia will provide more than 6 million COVID-19 booster reinforcements which will be applied from January 2022.

The government of Venezuela thus continues to guarantee the people’s right to health in the midst of the pandemic and the hundreds of unilateral coercive measures imposed by the US government.

“The efficacy of Sputnik Light as a booster (as an additional dose to any other vaccine brand),” states the Russian Direct Investment Fund, “reaches the same efficacy against the Delta variant as that of Sputnik V, which is over 83% protection against infection and over 94% against hospitalization.”