The governor of the state of Sao Paulo, Joao Doria, on Monday announced the start of vaccinations against COVID-19 with the Chinese CoronaVac as of January 25, although the latter has not yet been approved by health authorities.
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Health personnel will be the first to be vaccinated, according to the schedule provided by the governor at a press conference. Then come the people over 60, the natives and the Quilombolas, members of communities of descendants of fugitive slaves.
A total of nine million people are expected to be vaccinated by March in Brazil’s richest and most populous state, with 46 million people.
Mr. Doria announced the establishment of 5,200 vaccination centers.
For this program to be implemented on the dates set by the government of Sao Paulo, the CoronaVac vaccine, from the Chinese laboratory Sinovac, must be approved by the national health vigilance agency Anvisa.
But the application for approval has not yet been filed, even if phase 3 of clinical trials with several thousand volunteers in Brazil is already well advanced.
Joao Doria’s announcement was seen by many political analysts as a spade aimed at far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, who does not like the “Chinese vaccine”.
Mr. Doria notably criticized the national COVID-19 immunization plan, which provides that vaccinations will not begin until March.
“Why wait until March if we can save lives by January?” he said Monday at a press conference.
Last month, Jair Bolsonaro rekindled the “vaccine war” by welcoming the temporary suspension of clinical trials of CoronaVac after the death of a volunteer.
In October, he had already ordered the cancellation of an agreement for the acquisition of millions of doses of this Chinese vaccine, saying that he refused to make Brazilians “guinea pigs”.
“We need the union of all against the ideological fight and the denial, we must stop politicizing this subject”, declared Mr. Doria Monday.
The agreement signed by the government of Sao Paulo with Sinovac provides for the acquisition of six million doses to arrive in Brazil by the end of the month, and the local manufacture of 40 million additional doses.
On Monday, authorities in Sao Paulo announced that four million doses would be sold to other Brazilian states.
The federal government for its part signed an agreement with the British laboratory AstraZeneca for the local manufacture of more than 100 million doses of the vaccine developed by the University of Oxford, also in phase 3 of clinical trials in Brazil.
The Department of Health announced Monday that it intends to sign a memorandum of intent this week to purchase with Pfizer for 70 million doses.
On his Twitter account, President Bolsonaro said that in the event that Anvisa certifies these vaccines, his government “will offer the vaccine to everyone for free.” He assured that vaccination will not be made compulsory.
Brazil is the second country most bereaved by COVID-19, with more than 177,000 dead.