RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) – The Brazilian Ministry of Health announced on Thursday that a consignment of 2 million doses of coronavirus vaccine has arrived from India, a report that comes as public health experts sound the alarm over insufficient supplies in the South America’s largest country.
The ministry said the vaccine, developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford, would remove the customs in Sao Paulo before flying to Rio de Janeiro, where the Fiocruz Institute is based in Brazil. Fiocruz has partnered with AstraZeneca and Oxford for the distribution and production of the vaccine.
A flight from India scheduled for last week has been delayed, derailing the federal government’s plan to start vaccinating with the AstraZeneca shot. Instead, the vaccination began with the CoronaVac shot in Sao Paulo, where the state’s Butantan Institute has an agreement with Chinese biopharmaceutical company Sinovac.
Neither Fiocruz nor Butantan has received the technology from their partners to manufacture vaccines domestically, but must import the active ingredient.
The announcement of the 2 million doses from India comes as increasingly outspoken Brazilian experts express concern about the influx of raw materials from Asia needed to produce vaccines for the country of 210 million people.
“If doses of Butantan and those of India are counted, there is not enough vaccine, and there is no certainty about when Brazil will have more or how many,” said Mário Scheffer, professor of preventive medicine at the University of Sao Paulo. , told The Associated. Pressure. “It will interfere with our ability to achieve collective immunity in the short term.”
The Indian embassy in Brasilia did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the announced shipment or the cause of last week’s delay.
Butantan made available 6 million CoronaVac doses he imported from China to start immunizing Brazil, and he used materials imported from China to bottle another 4.8 million shots. The health regulator must approve the use of the latter group before it can be distributed to states and municipalities across Brazil.
Scheffer, in a report he published on January 18, estimated that the government would need 10 million doses just to cover front-line health workers. Elderly and other endangered Brazilians are left in the priority groups without vaccinations. The government’s own vaccination plan does not determine how many Brazilians are included in priority groups.
Brazil recorded 212,000 deaths related to COVID-19, the second highest total in the world after the United States, and infections and deaths rose again.
Although Brazil has a proud history of decades of vaccination campaigns, it has struggled in this pandemic to forge a complete plan and suffer several logistical pitfalls.
“The vaccination plan was generally badly done,” said Domingos Alves, deputy professor of social medicine at the University of Sao Paulo. “It is important that the information is transparent and clear to the population to know how this vaccination process will be done.”
It has been speculated on social media that diplomatic snuff – namely that stemming from allies of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who has criticized the Chinese government – could explain the delay in obtaining the required input.
Oliver Stuenkel, a professor of international relations at the Getulio Vargas Foundation, a university, told AP that such a lecture is too simple in the midst of rising global demand.
“Since Bolsonaro is not getting along well with the Chinese government, he obviously does not have direct access,” Stuenkel from Sao Paulo said. “There is a chance that the bad relationship will put Brazil further in the line of recipients, but not because the Chinese are actively saying, ‘Let’s punish Brazil,’ but perhaps because other presidents have a better relationship. “
The newspaper Folha de S. Paulo reported on Wednesday that Brazilian Health Minister Eduardo Pazuello had met with the Chinese ambassador to Brasilia and that Bolsonaro had requested a call with Chinese Xi Jinping. Filipe Martins, a Bolsonaro adviser on international relations, said in a television interview the same day that Brazil was looking for suppliers from other countries.
“The negotiations are far advanced,” Martins told RedeTV. He added that there is a big uproar over nothing. ‘
Lawmakers, including House Speaker Rodrigo Maia and Brazil-China Parliamentary Group President Senator Roberto Rocha, also met with the Chinese ambassador.
Butantan planned to supply 46 million doses to the Brazilian Ministry of Health by April. The import of 5,400 liters of the active ingredient is expected before the end of the month to make about 5.5 million doses, and new shipments from China depend on the authorization of the Chinese government, according to a statement from its press office.
Fiocruz initially planned to start delivering 100 million doses in February and 110 million more in the second half of the year. On December 30, the plan was to deliver 30 million doses by the end of February, but the first delivery was postponed until March, the institute told AP.
“Brazil has no vaccines available for its population,” Margareth Dalcolmo, a prominent pulmonologist who treated COVID-19 patients throughout the pandemic, said at an event in Rio this week while receiving an award. “It simply came to our notice then. There is nothing, no explanation that can justify it. ”