RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) – The Brazilian Ministry of Health announced Thursday that a shipment of 2 million doses of the coronavirus vaccine is coming from India, a report coming as public health experts raise the alarm about under-supply in the largest nation in South America.
The vaccine, developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford, will be released by customs in São Paulo on Friday before being sent to Rio de Janeiro, where the headquarters of the Fiocruz Institute, which is state-owned in Brazil, is located, the ministry said. Fiocruz has a partnership with AstraZeneca and Oxford to distribute and produce the vaccine.
A flight from India planned for last week was delayed, undermining the federal government’s plan to start immunizing with the AstraZeneca shot. Instead, vaccination started with the CoronaVac vaccine in São Paulo, where the state Butantan Institute has an agreement with Chinese biopharmaceutical company Sinovac.
Neither Fiocruz nor Butantan received the technology to produce vaccines on the domestic market from their partners, and they must import the active ingredient.
The announcement of India’s 2 million doses comes at a time when Brazilian experts are increasingly concerned about the flow of raw materials from Asia needed to produce vaccines for the country of 210 million people.
“Counting the doses of Butantan and those from India, there is not enough vaccine and it is not certain when Brazil will have more, or how much,” Mário Scheffer, professor of preventive medicine at the University of São Paulo, told The Associated Press. “This 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 boarding or the reason for the delay of last week.
Butantan made available 6 million doses of CoronaVac which it imported from China to initiate immunization from Brazil and used materials imported from China to bottle 4.8 million additional doses. The health regulatory agency must approve the use of the last batch before it can be distributed to states and municipalities in Brazil.
Scheffer estimated in a report that he published on January 18 that the government will need 10 million doses just to cover frontline health professionals, leaving the elderly and other Brazilians at risk included in priority groups without any vaccines. The government’s own immunization plan does not specify how many Brazilians are included in the priority groups.
Brazil recorded 212,000 COVID-19-related deaths, the second highest total in the world after the United States, and infections and deaths increasing again.
Although Brazil has a proud history of decades of immunization campaigns, in this pandemic, it has struggled to patch up a complete plan and suffered several logistical pitfalls.
“The vaccination plan is poorly done, in general,” said Domingos Alves, associate professor of social medicine at the University of São Paulo. “It is important that the information is transparent and clear so that the population knows how this vaccination process will be carried out”.
It has been speculated on social media that diplomatic confusions – especially those from allies of President Jair Bolsonaro, who criticized the Chinese government – may explain the delay in obtaining the necessary inputs.
Oliver Stuenkel, professor of international relations at the Getulio Vargas Foundation, a university, told the AP that such reading is overly simplistic amid rising global demand.
“Of course, as Bolsonaro does not get along with the Chinese government, he really does not have direct access,” said Stuenkel from São Paulo. “There is a chance that the bad relationship will end up putting Brazil further down the line, but not because the Chinese are actively saying, ‘We will punish Brazil’, but perhaps because other presidents have a better relationship.”
The Folha de S.Paulo newspaper reported on Wednesday that Brazilian Health Minister Eduardo Pazuello met with the Chinese ambassador in Brasilia and that Bolsonaro had requested a call with Chinese Xi Jinping. Filipe Martins, Bolsonaro’s advisor for international relations, said on the same day in a television interview that Brazil seeks suppliers from other countries.
“Negotiations are well advanced,” Martins told RedeTV! He added that there is “a great deal of confusion over nothing”.
Legislators, including the mayor, Rodrigo Maia, and the president of the Brazil-China parliamentary bench, Senator Roberto Rocha, also met with the Chinese ambassador.
Butantan planned to supply the Brazilian Ministry of Health with 46 million doses by April. Awaits the import of 5,400 liters of the active ingredient by the end of the month to make about 5.5 million doses, and new shipments from China are pending authorization from the Chinese government, according to a press release.
Fiocruz had initially scheduled the delivery of 100 million doses to start in February and another 110 million in the second half. On December 30, its plan was to reduce the delivery of 30 million doses by the end of February, but the first delivery was postponed to March, the institute told AP.
“Brazil does not have vaccines available for its population,” said Margareth Dalcolmo, a prominent pulmonologist who treated patients with COVID-19 during the pandemic, at an event in Rio this week, while receiving an award. “This is absolutely unjustifiable. There is nothing, no explanation that can justify this. “