BRASILIA | Brazil has ordered 100 million doses of vaccine from Pfizer-BioNTech and 38 million doses of the Janssen (Johnson & Johnson) vaccine to speed up a still too slow vaccination campaign, Health Minister Eduardo Pazuello announced on Monday.
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The minister, starting as President Jair Bolsonaro is openly looking for a successor, said during a press conference that in total the Ministry of Health had ordered nearly 563 million doses from several laboratories for this year.
In Brazil, the second country most bereaved by the pandemic, with nearly 280,000 deaths, vaccination only began in mid-January, with only the AstraZeneca vaccine and CoronaVac from the Chinese laboratory Sinovac. It continues at a slow pace due to lack of doses.
Some 9.8 million people received the first dose, or about 4.6% of the population, and 3.6 million only the second.
Pfizer’s vaccine was recently finalized by Brazilian regulatory agency Anvisa, but the first doses are not expected to arrive until April in the country of 212 million people.
The Brazilian government had been offered 70 million doses by the American laboratory as of August 2020, but the negotiations were unsuccessful, Brasilia having rejected a disclaimer.
In December, President Bolsonaro caused a controversy by asserting that with this clause, the laboratory would not be held responsible if people were “turned into crocodiles” because of supposed side effects.
According to the schedule unveiled by the ministry, only 13.5 million doses of this vaccine should be delivered before the end of the first half of the year.
Nearly half of Pfizer’s 100 million doses (46.5 million) are not expected until September.
Minister in the hot seat
The Bolsonaro government is also in negotiations for the acquisition of 13 million doses from the American laboratory Moderna.
More than a third of the approximately 563 million doses of vaccine on which the ministry relies by the end of the year will come from that of AstraZeneca, whose injections have been suspended by several European countries in recent days, due to fears , never confirmed, related to blood clots.
This did not prevent the Anvisa agency from issuing its final authorization on Friday, for 210 million doses which will be largely produced locally, by the Fiocruz Institute in Rio de Janeiro.
The pandemic continues to worsen in Brazil, with hospitals on the verge of saturation in most states and more than 2,000 daily deaths recorded multiple times in the past week.
Under pressure because of his chaotic management of the health crisis, President Bolsonaro very recently changed his rhetoric regarding vaccination, admitting that it is essential for economic activity to fully resume.
Minister Eduardo Pazuello, the third in the Health portfolio since the start of the pandemic, admitted on Monday that the head of state “was thinking of names to replace him”, but assured that he was “not going” to resign “.
“It is true that the president is looking for a replacement,” however added the general without any medical experience, committing to a “smooth transition” if he left.