The Aerolineas Argentinas Airbus 330 plane on Wednesday landed at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport to load Sputnik V vaccines that will be distributed by the government of President Alberto Fernandez in his country.
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Flight AR-1060 arrived in the Russian capital after a 15-hour non-stop trip. The plane is now scheduled to depart in a few hours and land in Buenos Aires at 10:00 am (local time) on December 24.
The first shipment of the COVID-19 vaccine, which will immunize some 300,000 people, will be transported in insulated containers at a temperature of 18 degrees below zero.
On December 10, the Russian Fund for Direct Investments reported that the Argentine government had signed an agreement with Moscow for the supply of 10 million doses of the Russian vaccine.
Officials of the Argentine airline company explained that this flight represented an unprecedented logistical effort. Besides the aircraft's holds were changed so that the cold containers can be transported properly, a crew of 20 people were trained to make a 40-hour round trip without taking a break in Russian territory.
Argentina will need at least 20 million vaccines to immunize a good proportion of its population. So far this South American country has reported 1,555,279 COVID-19 cases and 42,254 deaths.
"Sputnik V uses a human adenovirus technology of two different vectors, Ad26 and Ad5, which are applied in two injections. This solution does not contain live human adenoviruses, but adenoviral vectors that do not multiply and are completely safe," RT recalled.