Polarization fuels the political battle over vaccines and their approval in Brazil

The clientele at the doors of a bar in Rio de Janeiro this Monday despite the increase in cases.PILAR OLIVARES / Reuters

Covid infections increased so much in Brazil throughout October that this Monday the World Health Organization gave it a wake-up call.

He asked the authorities to take this rebound "very seriously" because the numbers are "very worrying."

Other aspects cause concern to specialists: the federal government has stored more PCR tests about to expire than the public network has done and a formidable political battle is brewing around the approval of vaccines because each one has its own political godfather in Brazil.

It is not only about immunizing Brazilians, but about the potential business of manufacturing it for the rest of the region.

Brazilian politicians argue while judges analyze whether the vaccine should be mandatory (when there is one) and scientists and health workers are shaking hands because the occupation in intensive care units of a fifth of the States exceeds 90 %;

Rio de Janeiro is on the verge of collapse with more than 92% of intensive care beds in use.

Brazil is the second country in the world with the most deaths (174,000) and the third in cases (6.4 million).

The Ministry of Health announced the general lines of its immunization program on the eve that the United Kingdom became the first country in the world to authorize a vaccine on Wednesday.

But the process to grant the permit is punctuated by polarization, which in Brazil hampers the management of this health crisis from minute one.

In the absence of leadership from President Jair Bolsonaro, each governor sought his life and some directly signed their own agreements with manufacturers as the country became a laboratory for four clinical trials.

The federal government has a pact with AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford for the purchase of 100 million doses (that is, almost half of the population), while the governor of the State of São Paulo, João Doria, has bet everything on compound developed by the Chinese firm Sinovac.

Doria received last month the first 120,000 doses that it has in storage pending the completion of clinical trials and the Brazilian health surveillance agency (Anvisa) to begin the authorization process.

Simultaneously, Bolsonaro casts doubt on the grounds that the injection comes from China and proclaims that he does not intend to get vaccinated.

At 65, the disease passed without sequelae.

The governor of São Paulo, the richest and most populated state that accumulates the most deaths from covid, openly expressed a few days ago in an interview his fear that this acrimony would have consequences: “We suspect that Anvisa may suffer political interference from the presidency and it might not act with the independence it should, ”he told

.

Doria went further.

He even threatened to use the vaccine without the formal approval of the Brazilian agency if the Sinovac injection is approved in the United States, the European Union or Asia, which would be illegal.

Anvisa plans to carry out emergency authorizations, but for now no company has requested it.

The Chinese vaccine has become the highlight of Governor Doria's presidential aspirations for two years from now.

The batch received is part of the six million doses you have purchased.

The Butantan Institute of Public Health would participate in a future indigenous manufacturing in cooperation with Sinovac.

Its equivalent in Rio de Janeiro, the Fiocruz Foundation, collaborates in the AstraZeneca and Oxford vaccine, the first doses of which are expected in February.

The first details about how the vaccination will be were released on Tuesday by the Brazilian Ministry of Health.

The priority will be health workers, those over 75 years of age and indigenous people.

As a huge and tropical country, it is important for the authorities that the coronavirus vaccines fit into their cold chain and can be stored for long periods at between two and eight degrees Celsius.

A requirement that would exclude those of Pfizer and Moderna, which require more cold.

The ministry works within the framework of the very extensive national vaccination program that historically reached high coverage rates, which is declining with the advance of anti-vaccine movements.

Another of the relevant Brazilian deficits in this health crisis is the shortage of

carried out, which results in underreporting of cases in addition to blinding managers, who cannot know who is sick to isolate them and cut the chain of infections.

The last chapter in the soap opera of the tests is that the ministry has, standing in a warehouse, seven million that will expire next month, according to the newspaper

.

The fact that they are a million more than all the PCR analyzes carried out in the public network gives the caliber of the fiasco.

The reason for laughter in the networks has been that it occurs when the Minister of Health is a general logistics expert who came to office after the dismissal of two doctors.

And although the speed of infections has slowed, it is above one at the national level with the usual territorial differences.

While Rio is debating whether to resume face-to-face classes at the university, São Paulo announced the day after the municipal elections that it is reducing the capacity of bars and other establishments.

Information about the coronavirus

- Here you can follow the last hour on the evolution of the pandemic

- The coronavirus map: this is how cases grow day by day and country by country

- Questions and answers about the coronavirus

- Guide to action against the disease

- In case of symptoms, these are the telephones that have been enabled in each Latin American country.