Pfizer to jab whole Brazilian town as part of Covid-19 study
MOVE AIMED TO STUDY TRANSMISSION OF VIRUS AFTER ALL ARE INOCULATED
Pfizer will study the effectiveness of its vaccine against Covid-19 by inoculating the whole population over the age of 12 in a town in southern Brazil, the company said yesterday.
The study will be conducted in Toledo, population 143,000, in the west of Parana state, together with Brazil’s National Vaccination Program, local health authorities, a hospital and a federal university.
Pfizer said the purpose was to study transmission of the coronavirus in a “real-life scenario” after the population has been vaccinated. “The initiative is the first and only of its kind to be undertaken in collaboration with the pharmaceutical company in a developing country,” Pfizer said. A similar study was conducted by the Butantan Institute, one of Brazil’s leading biomedical research centers, in the smaller town of Serrana, in Sao Paulo state, to test the CoronaVac shot developed by China’s Sinovac Biotech Ltd.
More study
In May, Butantan said mass vaccination had reduced Covid-19 death by 95 per cent in the town with a population of 45,644 people. The institute is considering extending the study for a third dose.
“Here we believe in science and we lament the almost 600,000 deaths from Covid-19 in Brazil,” Toledo Mayor Beto Lunitti said announcing the Pfizer study. Regis Goulart, a researcher at Toledo’s Moinhos de Vento Hospital, said its aim was to validate the real-world efficacy and safety of the vaccine seen in clinical trials. The observational study will also be an opportunity to do long-term monitoring for up to one year of participants.