Argentina on Wednesday became only the second country to authorise the coronavirus vaccine developed by drug firm AstraZeneca and Oxford University, AFP reported.

“Argentina has signed a production agreement for the vaccine, which has been added to an emergency register for one year.

“The product presents an acceptable benefit-risk balance,” the national medicines administration said.

The Oxford/Astrazeneca vaccine can be stored, transported and handled at normal refrigerated conditions, and is therefore cheaper and easier to administer than others developed by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna that require freezing.

Argentina and Mexico have an agreement to produce the vaccine and distribute it in Latin America.

This is the third COVID-19 vaccine to have got the  approval in Argentina after the Pfizer-BioNTech and Russian Sputnik V– although an agreement on procurement with Pfizer is yet to be reached.

On Tuesday, the South American country began administering Sputnik V, which has come under fire for being rolled out despite the lack of clinical trials.

The country has acquired 300,000 doses of Sputnik V with another 19 million due to arrive in January and February.

President Alberto Fernandez’s government has said it intends to purchase 51 million vaccine doses in total.

Argentina has recorded more than 43,000 deaths and over 1.6 million cases of the coronavirus among its 44 million population.