While Brazilians wait for vaccine, Bolsonaro makes politics

While Brazilians wait for vaccine, Bolsonaro makes politics

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In an early Christmas gift for some, Chile and Mexico started immunizing on Thursday after granting emergency approval for the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine. But in Brazil, where Covid-19’s death toll is much higher, vital inoculation could be out of reach for months – the country’s Ministry of Health announced last week that vaccinations would begin in February 2021.

As Brazil has a strong history of vaccination across the country, she says there was a widespread expectation that Brazilians would have a regional advantage in the battle against the pandemic.

“Brazil has always been a leader in the implementation of new vaccines. We managed to achieve high vaccination coverage, even though it is a continental country with very different regions, like São Paulo with a high population density and Amazonas, with huge distances, (e) an indigenous population “, she said.

“People expected the Brazilian vaccination program to start earlier,” she said. But “other countries in the Americas that have prepared themselves are already starting vaccination, and Brazil has been left behind”.

Every day the virus spreads without control in Brazil has a lethal cost. Nearly 190,000 people were killed by Covid-19 – the highest number of deaths reported worldwide, after the United States. Even so, President Jair Bolsonaro publicly guessed the urgency of immunization, disparaging “the race for a vaccine”.
“The pandemic is really coming to an end, the numbers show it, we are dealing with small increases now,” he said on Saturday, according to CNN Brasil. “But the race for the vaccine is not justified because you are playing with people’s lives.”

With more than 7.4 million people diagnosed with Covid-19 in Brazil and new variants of the virus appearing abroad, there is little reason to think that the pandemic is decreasing – a claim Bolsonaro made several times this year, even with the cases continuing to increase in the country. Only the USA and India reported more coronavirus infections than Brazil.

The Brazilian president also made headlines last week with a bizarre attempt to sow doubts about the potential side effects of the Pfizer vaccine. “If you become a crocodile, that’s your problem,” he warned. “If you become Superman, or grow a beard like a woman, or a man’s voice gets high, I have nothing to do with it … or worse, interfere with people’s immune systems.”

Pfizer did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.

Domingues believes that the Brazilian federal government was caught unprepared to use the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine, after launching its support for a vaccine candidate from the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca, which have a partnership with the local foundation Fiocruz. According to a note released last week by the Ministry of Health, Brazil has agreed to purchase more than 100 million doses of this vaccine, which is still under development.

In 2021, the Bolsonaro government will also receive about 43 million doses of vaccine through the COVAX Facility, and signed a memorandum of understanding to acquire 70 million doses from Pfizer and another 38 million from Johnson and Johnson’s Janssen subsidiary. However, most doses of the last two vaccines are not expected to be available by the end of the year, according to the statement from the Ministry of Health.
Initially, says Domingues, “the Ministry of Health tried to be cautious and only agreed to purchase the vaccine from the AstraZeneca laboratory and was not prepared to receive the new vaccines that require storage below 70 (degrees Celsius)”. The Pfizer vaccine should be stored in extremely low temperatures, around minus 75 degrees Celsius – which is about 50 degrees cooler than any vaccine used in the United States before the pandemic.

Meanwhile, fears about the influence of politics in the process, after a year of fierce clashes between Bolsonaro and state governors over the country’s pandemic response.

The president makes no secret of preferring the Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine to a vaccine developed by Chinese manufacturer Sinovac Biotech, which has support from the state of São Paulo and is under local development with the Brazilian laboratory Instituto Butantan.

Contrary to assurances by Brazilian Health Minister Eduardo Pazuello and other officials that any vaccine approved by health regulators will be welcomed by the federal government, Bolsonaro promised on Facebook not to buy the vaccine made in China, and his political drivers worked to ignite xenophobia and fear around it.
No vaccine has yet been approved by the Brazilian health regulatory agency, ANVISA, which is under pressure from the Federal Supreme Court and the country’s parliamentary leaders to act. Domingues says he trusts that the agency’s experts and employees “will not accept political interference” from any side when assessing the science and safety of each candidate.
Ordinary Brazilians, however, may not be as immune to influence, especially when it emanates from the highest levels of government. As in many countries, an antivaxxer movement has been growing in Brazil for years. And in addition to raising doubts about some vaccines and ruling out the severity of the virus itself, Bolsonaro offered fuel for antivaxxers, promising that he will personally refuse the vaccination because he has already taken Covid-19 – despite evidence of reinfection, although rare, it is possible.

ANVISA and the Brazilian Ministry of Health did not respond to requests for comment.

Reporting contributed by Tatiana Arias, Jennifer Z. Deaton, Natalie Gallon and Stefano Pozzebon.

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