Machines squeak and whistle, nurses and doctors fade as they storm the room of an elderly man gasping for air who does not want to come. The decision to intubate is made quickly. This is his only chance at a survival that is far from guaranteed.
Among the half-dozen in the room, nurse Monica Aparecida Calazans says she has seen too many deaths. “I lost all eight of my colleagues to Covid,” she said. “It’s such a cruel disease.”
On Sunday, only 0.5% of the country received a first dose of AstraZeneca or Sinovac vaccines. Not one person in Brazil has been fully vaccinated, except some who have participated in clinical trials for vaccinations.
Furthermore, the vaccine supply is extremely limited, and there is still a dire lack of detail in government plans to obtain more.
“I would have said Brazil would be the first”
In June 2020, few thought that Brazil would struggle so badly with its implementation.
The country’s massive national health care system, with health workers in nearly all thousands of municipalities in Brazil through a series of hospitals and clinics, has a long history of successful vaccination of its people.
But many experts believe the incapacity of the federal government, led by Covid president Skeptic Jair Bolsonaro, has sabotaged his coronavirus response. They point to a clear lack of urgency on the part of the federal government to secure supplies and a lack of diversification in the supply of vaccines.
“At the beginning of the pandemic, I would have told you that Brazil would be the first country in Latin America to vaccinate its people, because we know how to do that,” said Natalia Pasternak, a Brazilian microbiologist and lawyer. in health care. “We have all the infrastructure we need. Now we just need a better president.”
Brazilian federal health officials initially announced a launch plan similar to that of many other major countries. It will manufacture AstraZeneca’s vaccine in the country, which will deliver about 30 million doses by the end of January 2021.
About 200 million more would be produced by the end of the year, administered first to health care workers and the elderly, and then in the order of vulnerability.
The Brazilian government has clearly placed its initial hopes on the AstraZeneca vaccine. However, its vaccination tests took longer than some others, a completely normal and foreseeable possibility given the unprecedented nature of the development of the Covid-19 vaccine.
The Brazilian Vaccine Regulatory Agency finally granted the authorization to use AstraZeneca vaccine on January 17, but a lack of the active ingredient needed to make the vaccine means that Brazilian laboratories have not yet reached the hundreds of millions. doses required do not begin to produce.
Supplies are due to start arriving this week, but the delay has nearly destroyed the government’s timeline. There is no set date for when the completed doses will start shipping.
As large countries with similar purchasing power negotiated agreements last year to buy other vaccines from Moderna and Sinovac, Brazil was beaten.
The Brazilian health minister even rejected an offer from Pfizer in August to buy up to 70 million doses of the vaccine. The ministry defended the decision, saying in part that it was concerned about a payment guarantee and an agreement that contractual matters would be dealt with in a US court.
“That’s why you do not throw all your eggs in one basket,” Pasternak said. “There is no reasonable explanation for not planning ahead about how you are going to vaccinate your population.”
Yet Bolsonaro recently said that no government will ‘do better than what my government does’.
Bolsonaro is China-flip-flop
The best hope for a short-term vaccine supply in Brazil is probably the CoronaVac, developed by the Chinese firm Sinovac. Regulators approved its use on January 17 and the government of Bolsonaro approved the purchase of 100 million doses.
He is leaning towards discrediting the vaccine as São Paulo Governor João Doria, a key political rival and likely rival in the 2022 presidential race, accepts it.
Doria went through the Bolsonaro administration and negotiated directly with China for the Sinovac vaccine and eventually secured millions of doses. Doria says the president’s act on securing supplies forced his hand. “In Brazil, we have to fight two viruses, the coronavirus and the Bolsonaro virus,” Doria said in an interview.
Doria was forced to hand over his state’s Chinese vaccine to the federal government. “We have to [vaccinate] faster than we’re going now, “he said. We need more vaccines, but this responsibility belongs to the federal government. “
Both men may now be stuck with a vaccine that seems to be less effective than others. Recent data shows that the CoronaVac vaccine has an efficacy of 50.4 percent, which removes the 50 percent WHO guideline with the smallest margins.
According to Bolsonaro, in addition to the existing purchase agreements, its administration will also buy vaccines as they become available. This is a vague statement, as vaccinations are one of the most popular products in the world.
Angry, frustrated and helpless
The confusion and frustration over the deployment of vaccines in Brazil comes at a time when the outbreak of Brazil has never been worse.
In addition to the total increase in daily cases and deaths that belongs to the highest of the pandemic so far, a new Covid -19 variant has emerged that, according to epidemiologists, is likely to be more easily transmitted and more deadly.
Vaccinations are needed more than ever, but at the moment the supply simply does not exist. Júlio César Barbosa, a nurse working in a public hospital in São Paulo, has vaccinated voluntarily to vaccinate people, but says he feels helpless in the midst of the shortage. “I am worried and I am angry with our government because they have made this virus insignificant from the start.”
CNN’s Natalie Gallón contributed to this report.