São Paulo eyes mass use of Chinese vaccine

Brazil on Thursday received 600 liters of Chinese-produced COVID-19 inactivated vaccine concentrate, for São Paulo’s plan to inject its state citizens in a mass vaccination in January. The vaccine will assist Brazil in its battle against the COVID-19 pandemic, which has killed more than 175,000 nationwide.

The 600 liters of vaccine concentrate will be packaged and labelled at Brazilian research partner Butantan’s facilities, pending regulatory approval, and will provide for 50 million people with two doses for each person, the Global Times learned from the Chinese producer Sinovac on Friday.

It is the second batch of the Chinese vaccine after 120,000 doses arrived in November.

To save vaccine package materials such as bottles and corks, more Chinese vaccine producers, including another frontrunner company CanSino, are preparing to export the vaccine as raw pulp instead of complete, bottled vaccines, according to a senior expert working with SF Express, who is in charge of COVID-19 vaccine global logistics.

ANVISA has received the data of the latestage trials in Brazil and is in the process of evaluating it. Results are expected to be released by December 14.

The State Government expects Butantan will obtain ANVISA’s approval of the immunizer by January 2021 and apply a mass inoculation for São Paulo citizens with the Chinese-developed vaccine. These two batches of CoronaVac doses are under storage for further mass vaccination across the state.

São Paulo Governor João Doria said at Thursday’s press meeting that immunizations in his state would begin in January, which means the state plans to initiate mass inoculation ahead of the national plan. “We are not going to wait for March and we are not going to bury more Brazilians just to wait, when we could be saving more than 60 thousand lives as of January,” Doria said.