YEREVAN, February 3. /ARKA/. Armenian Health Minister Anahit Avanesyan had a meeting today with Russian ambassador to Armenia Sergey Kopyrkin and an embassy counselor Pavel Kurochkin to discuss cooperation between the ministries of health of the two countries.
“The Armenian-Russian conferences on health issues, which are annually held in Moscow and Yerevan, play an important role in the development of bilateral relations. The next conference in 2021 is planned to be held in Moscow,” the health ministry said in a press release.
Avanesyan was said to thank Russia for an invaluable assistance in the fight against coronavirus.
“Close cooperation with the Russian side, regular information and experience exchange are very important for us, and today our specialists are actively negotiating the purchase of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine against Covid-19,” she said.
The minister added that Armenia has signed a cooperation agreement within the framework of the COVAX FACILITY initiative. “We are also ready to purchase additional batches of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine as part of this initiative,” she added.
On February 1 this year, Armenian Ministry of Health approved the use of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine against coronavirus.
Earlier, Russian Health Minister Mikhail Murashko and the head of Rospotrebnadzor Anna Popova visited Yerevan and handed over to Armenia samples of the Sputnik V vaccine for vaccinating 15 people.
At a press conference in early January, Deputy Director of the National Center for Disease Control and Prevention Gayane Sahakyan, who was one of the vaccinated people, said that patients who received the Russian-made vaccine in Armenia had no side-effects.