- With the passes-certificates of citizens of San Marino, vaccinated with the drug "Sputnik V", there were some difficulties.

Do you know if they are allowed to move freely around the EU, given that the Russian vaccine has not yet been approved by the European Medicines Agency?

- We have encountered some difficulties associated with the movement of our citizens in Italy.

Our certificate pass is recognized in the EU, but only for those citizens of our country who have been vaccinated with Pfizer.

Therefore, those who have taken root in "Sputnik V" - and this is about 94% of our population - experience difficulties in entering Italy and using services on its territory, for example, with visiting bars, restaurants, cinemas and other closed premises.

We are currently working with the Italian government to find a solution to this problem.

- How important is this approval for moving between your non-EU country and, for example, Italy?

- As I said, in order to resolve this issue, we are working with Italy and trying to come to a bilateral agreement.

We are looking for a solution.

We can guarantee that a citizen of San Marino has antibodies to coronavirus, and therefore we are trying to understand whether it is possible to find a solution based not on the vaccine itself, but on the antibodies developed by our citizens.

- Why did San Marino choose the Russian drug?

- We started mass vaccination of the population only in March - about two months later than all other European countries.

The thing is that we had an agreement with Italy and the EU regarding the supply to San Marino of vaccines approved by the European Medicines Agency, that is, drugs from Pfizer and AstraZeneca.

But at the end of February, there was not a single dose of these vaccines in the Republic of San Marino, and the epidemiological situation in the country at that time was very difficult.

Therefore, it was necessary to find another solution to start vaccinating the population.

Later, we still received the Pfizer vaccine from Italy, but it was then that we needed to start mass vaccination, and the only available drug that we could find was Sputnik V.

- How confident were you in its effectiveness?

- We have conducted a number of studies on the effectiveness of the Sputnik V vaccine, in addition, certain studies on this topic have been published in scientific journals.

Together with the Lazzaro Spallanzani National Institute of Infectious Diseases in Rome, we studied the efficacy and safety of this vaccine.

Security has also been studied in conjunction with the University of Bologna.

According to our data, the vaccine provides high efficiency - it is close to 100%.

Thanks to the Sputnik V vaccination, all San Marino residents developed antibodies.

Such a conclusion can be made if we look at the curve of the incidence of coronavirus in our country for March and April of this year.

At that time, we were overwhelmed by a pandemic, the situation was difficult, there was a serious influx of coronavirus cases in hospitals.

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And then, about a week after the introduction of the second component of "Sputnik V" to the population, beds began to be vacated in our hospitals and the incidence rate in the country began to decline.

Now in the Republic of San Marino there are no hospitalized coronavirus patients at all.

- What are the main barriers to the approval of Sputnik V by the European Medicines Agency?

What caused the delay?

 Do you think the EU would have the same questions if the vaccine was not Russian?

“I don’t know, and I don’t want to know.

I think there is some political aspect here.

We are now awaiting the approval of Sputnik V by the European Medicines Agency.

I don’t know ... I think they have some difficulties with the data, with the study of this vaccine, but, again, in my opinion, it has the highest efficiency of all vaccines available in the world.