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Setback for Brazil: India postponed shipment of 2 million AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccines

2021-01-15T13:13:54.860Z


The plane was ready to leave this Friday, but the authorities of the Asian country warned that it is still "too early" to supply other nations.


01/15/2021 9:59 AM

  • Clarín.com

  • World

Updated 01/15/2021 10:07

In an attempt to speed up the immunization plan, the Brazilian government was preparing to send a plane to India in search of two million AstraZeneca vaccines against the coronavirus.

But, at the last minute, the Asian authorities announced that the sale was postponed because it still cannot "supply other countries."

When asked about the export to Brazil, which had already prepared the flight to leave this Friday, the spokesman for the Indian Foreign Ministry said that "the vaccination process is beginning in India and it

is too early to give an answer on the supply

to other countries". 

The order for the vaccines had been made by Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro himself to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Before the announcement of the Indian government, sources of the Ministry of Health told CNN Brazil that the departure of the plane to Mumbai to transport the immunizers was postponed.

The Brazilian Health Minister, Eduardo Pazuello, had announced that the AstraZeneca vaccines, together with the Chinese Coronavac, will be part of

the first phase of immunization that can begin on January 20

.

The Brazilian National Health Surveillance Agency (Anvisa) will present its opinion this Sunday on the validity of the AstraZeneca and Chinese vaccines, to start emergency immunization. 

On a round trip to Bombay that was to cover more than 15,000 kilometers, the aircraft had already left Thursday afternoon from the Viracopos airport, in the state of Sao Paulo, loaded with

special containers

to transport the doses of the immunizing.

The aircraft, an Airbus of the Brazilian company Azul, took off at 4:52 p.m. local time (7:52 p.m. GMT), almost four hours after the announcement by the Government the day before, to the northeastern city of Recife, where it made a stopover.

According to a statement released on Thursday by the Ministry of Health, issues related to "international logistics" delayed the departure of the flight from Recife to Mumbai, so the plane was to take the trip to the Indian city this Friday.

A vial of the Oxford / Astrazeneca Covid-19 coronavirus vaccine.

Photo: AFP

The Brazilian Health Ministry had reported that the two million doses of the vaccine from the Anglo-Swedish laboratory AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford had an estimated weight of 15 tons and would be stored in containers that will guarantee temperature control until arrival. to Rio de Janeiro.

The arrival of the cargo in Rio de Janeiro was initially scheduled for this Saturday, but the antidote that is produced in Bombay by the Indian laboratory Serum will not finally reach its destination after the decision to suspend supplies.

This Thursday,

Brazil registered more than 1,000 deaths

from coronavirus for the third consecutive day, after suffering 1,131 deaths in the last 24 hours, bringing the total to 207,095.

According to the Ministry of Health, 67,758 new cases have been registered since Wednesday, the third day in a row with more than 60,000 infections, bringing the total number of positives registered in the country to 8,324,294.


The state of Sao Paulo, the most populated in the country, is also the most affected, with 1,590,829 cases and 49,289 deaths, followed by Rio de Janeiro with 473,648 records and 27,441 deaths.


With information from agencies.

JPE

Look also

Coronavirus in Brazil: hospitals run out of oxygen and declare a curfew in the state of Amazonas

For a Brazilian variant of coronavirus, the United Kingdom prohibits arrivals from Argentina and 13 other South American countries

Source: clarin

All news articles on 2021-01-15

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