The Brazilian government announced Thursday that it would finally receive two million doses of the British AstraZeneca / Oxford vaccine made in India on Friday, which will allow it to accelerate its vaccination campaign against Covid-19.
"The two million doses of AstraZeneca are due to arrive in Brazil late Friday afternoon,"
the Ministry of Health said in a brief statement.
Read also: Brazil: AstraZeneca and CoronaVac vaccines approved, first vaccinations in Sao Paulo
These doses were originally due to arrive in Brazil last week.
President Jair Bolsonaro blamed the delay on
“political pressure”
on the government of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to prioritize the vaccination campaign in his country.
Brazil, with 212 million inhabitants, is the second most bereaved country in the world by the coronavirus pandemic behind the United States, with more than 214,000 dead.
The Brazilian government had relied on this vaccine developed by the British laboratory AstraZeneca in collaboration with the University of Oxford to launch its vaccination campaign.
He had to be satisfied last Sunday, for the launch, of the six million doses of CoronaVac, developed by the Chinese laboratory Sinovac in collaboration with the Butantan Institute in Sao Paulo.
This vaccine is promoted by the governor of the State of Sao Paulo, Joao Doria, a potential rival of the far-right president in the 2022 presidential election. The AstraZeneca vaccine, developed in partnership with the Fiocruz foundation of the Brazilian Ministry of Health, and CoronaVac require two doses to be injected a few weeks apart.
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