Russia to make Sputnik V vaccine in Italy
MILAN — Russia signed a deal to produce its Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine in Italy, the first contract in the European Union, the Italian Russian Chamber of Commerce announced Tuesday.
The deal was signed with Adienne Srl, the Italian subsidiary of a Swiss-based pharmaceutical company, and Kirill Dmitriev, CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund. Production of a planned 10 million doses this year is set to launch in July.
“The innovative production process will help create new jobs and allow Italy to control the entire production of the compound,’’ the chamber said in a statement. Financial terms were not released.
Sputnik V has not yet been approved for use in the EU, but the body’s regulator, the European Medicines Agency, or EMA, started a rolling review of the vaccine last week.
Russian authorities are working on 20 similar collaborations in Europe and the Sputnik V vaccine has been registered in 45 nations worldwide, the chamber said.
Four oaks, one sacred destiny: Recreating Notre Dame’s spire
JUPILLES, France — Four French oaks that have stood for hundreds of years in a once-royal forest now have a sacred destiny. Felled Tuesday in the Loire region’s Forest of Berce, they were selected to reconstruct Notre Dame cathedral’s fallen spire.
The spire, made of wood and clad in lead, became the most potent symbol of the April 2019 blaze when it was seen engulfed in flames, collapsing dramatically into the inferno.
Some 1,000 oaks in more than 200 French forests were chosen to make the frame of the cathedral transept and spire — destined to be admired on the Paris skyline for potentially hundreds of years.
“Given the place occupied by the cathedral in the hearts of the French, in the history of France and the world … we are happy (that) the entire industry — from foresters to sawyers — is mobilized to meet this challenge,” said Michel Druilhe, President of France Bois Foret, a national interprofessional forestry network.
Eight of the trees — destined for the most monumental part of the spire — were found in the Forest of Berce that once belonged to the Kings of France.
On Tuesday, chainsaw-wielding tree surgeons in Berce scaled the special oaks to fell them in a race against the clock. All 1,000 must be “harvested” all throughout the country by the end of March, otherwise harmful tree sap and moisture could enter the wood fibers.
Provincial Italian hospital overrun by virus variant
CHIARI, Italy — The 160-bed hospital in the Po River Valley town of Chiari has no more room for patients stricken with the highly contagious variant of COVID-19 first identified in Britain that has put hospitals in Italy’s northern Brescia province on high alert.
That history was repeating itself one year after Lombardy became the epicenter of Italy’s pandemic was a sickening realization for Dr. Gabriele Zanolini, who runs the COVID-19 ward in the M. Mellini Hospital in the once-walled city that maintains its medieval circular street pattern.
“You know that there are patients in the emergency room, and you don’t know where to put them,” Zanolini told The Associated Press.
“This for me is anguish, not to be able to respond to people who need to be treated. The most difficult moment is to find ourselves again in a state of emergency, after so much time.”
The U.K. variant surge has filled 90% of hospital beds in Brescia province, bordering both Veneto and Emilia-Romagna regions, as Italy crossed the grim threshold of 100,000 pandemic dead on Monday and marks the one-year anniversary Wednesday of Italy’s draconian lockdown, the first in the West.
