BRASÍLIA (Reuters) – The Brazilian government has signed an agreement with the Butantan Institute in São Paulo to buy full production this year of a Chinese vaccine COVID-19 it is producing, the institute said, after announcing solid efficacy test data.
Earlier in the day, Health Minister Eduardo Pazuello said the government was closing a deal for up to 100 million doses of the vaccine developed by China’s Sinovac Biotech, called CoronaVac, for use in the national immunization program.
This program, which uses CoronaVac doses and 100 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to be completed at the federal biomedical center Fiocruz, will start on at least January 20th.
Subsequently, Butantan said it signed an agreement with the government for 46 million initial doses, with another option of 54 million doses later.
Brazil faces a second wave of the second most lethal coronavirus outbreak in the world, after the United States. The death toll in the country exceeded 200,000 on Thursday.
Right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro has been criticized for minimizing the severity of the pandemic and undermining confidence in vaccines.
Bolsonaro said he would refuse any COVID-19 vaccine and rejected the injection of Sinovac in particular. He said last year that the federal government would not buy a Chinese vaccine.
Butantan announced on Thursday that the results of the advanced stage tests in Brazil showed that the Chinese vaccine had an efficacy rate of 78% and totally avoided serious cases of COVID-19, while the center seeks authorization for emergency use. .
At a news conference, Pazuello said that issues of responsibility, production and sovereignty are preventing Brazil from reaching an agreement to buy doses of a COVID-19 vaccine made by Pfizer.
“We cannot sign a Pfizer agreement with current contractual obligations,” he said, adding that the term and quantity of doses offered did not work for Brazil.
Pazuello praised the vaccine developed by Janssen, a Johnson & Johnson unit, but said the company could only offer three million doses in the second half of this year.
Brazil is also in talks with a local private company that plans to make the Russian Sputnik V vaccine, he said.
(Reporting by Gabriel Stargardter and Anthony BoadleEditing by Brad Haynes, Sam Holmes and Lincoln Feast.)