Brazil approves emergency use of first vaccines
Coronavirus roars back; death toll second only to United States’
Brazil granted approval for the emergency use of AstraZeneca Plc and Sinovac Biotech Ltd vaccines against COVID-19, allowing the country to kick-start deploying shots as the virus roars back in Latin America’s largest economy.
Health regulator Anvisa cleared the vaccines in a Sunday meeting, citing the recent significant increase in the number of COVID-19 cases in Brazil and the lack of alternatives for treatment of the disease.
While government technicians said there’s still information needed on the shots, the benefits of vaccinations outweigh the risks, according to rapporteur Meiruze Freitas.
“We must continue monitoring the vaccines to capture adverse effects that were perhaps not seen in trials,” she said.
Minutes after Anvisa finished its meeting, Sao Paulo began vaccinations, making Monica Calazans, a 54-year-old Black nurse, the first Brazilian to get a shot against COVID-19.
Governor Joao Doria stood by her side with a shirt that read, “Brazil’s vaccine.”
The health ministry had said it would take between three to five days for the shots to arrive in all states, and vaccination would start simultaneously across the country. The elderly and health-care workers are first in line.
Although it’s one of the countries hit hardest by the pandemic, ranking third globally in cases and second only to the U.S. in number of deaths, Brazil been late in vaccinating its 212 million citizens. Much like in the first phase of the pandemic, national vaccination plans have been marred by contradicting measures and political infighting.
Sinovac’s shot, bashed publicly by President Jair Bolsonaro “because of its origin” in China, has become the sole option available for the country to start immunizing its 212 million people.
The only other vaccine the government has purchased, AstraZeneca’s, has yet to arrive in Brazil. Fiocruz, which will produce the shot locally, had forecast it would have doses ready just in February and a last minute push to get readymade vaccines from India, announced by the health ministry last week, failed. A plane expected to fetch 2 million doses in Mumbai was diverted to deploy oxygen to the Northern city of Manaus instead, while the flight to India remains on hold.
Talks with other pharmaceutical companies including Pfizer Inc have dragged. Earlier this month, Health Minister Eduardo Pazuello harshly dismissed criticism that Brazil was falling behind in the vaccination race, saying the government had secured 354 million doses.
At the time, he also said there weren’t enough shots available on the open market — conceding, in effect, that Brazil had failed to seek them early — and so the country would have to make its own.
Sao Paulo already has some 11 million doses of the Sinovac shot, dubbed CoronaVac, on the ground. The vaccine is being made in partnership with local research institute Butantan. AstraZeneca partnered with another local player, Fiocruz, to produce the shots in Brazil.