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How Brazil's vaccination plan fell apart

2021-02-02T11:31:58.425Z


As of Sunday, only 0.5% of the Brazilian population had received a first dose of the AstraZeneca or Sinovac vaccines.


What is the vaccination situation in Brazil?

3:15

São Paulo (CNN) -

Some of the sickest people in São Paulo, Brazil, occupy the rooms of the Covid-19 pavilion at the Emilio Ribas Institute of Infectious Diseases.

Machines beeping and buzzing, nurses and doctors blur as they rush into the room of an elderly man who is gasping for air that is not coming.

The decision to intubate is made quickly.

It is their only chance to survive, something far from being guaranteed.

Among the half a dozen people in the room, nurse Mónica Aparecida Calazans says she has already seen too many deaths.

"I have already lost eight of my colleagues to covid," he said.

"It is a very cruel disease."

  • Brazil authorizes two covid-19 vaccines for emergency use

Calazans risks his life every day to fight a pandemic that Brazil is nowhere near controlling.

However, in a way, he's lucky.

In mid-January, Calazans was the first Brazilian to receive a vaccine, no small feat in a country where vaccination has been nothing short of disastrous.

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As of Sunday, only 0.5% of the country's population had received a first dose of the AstraZeneca or Sinovac vaccines.

Not a single person in Brazil has been fully vaccinated, except for a few who participated in clinical vaccine trials.

Furthermore, vaccine supplies are extremely limited and there remains a surprising lack of detail in the government's plans to secure more.

"I would have said that Brazil would be the first"

In June 2020, few thought that Brazil would be struggling so hard with vaccination.

The country's huge national health system, with health workers present in almost all of Brazil's thousands of municipalities through a series of hospitals and clinics, has a long history of successfully vaccinating its population.

But several experts say that the ineptitude of the federal government, led by President Jair Bolsonaro, skeptical of the covid-19, has sabotaged its response to the coronavirus.

They point to a clear lack of urgency on the part of the federal government to secure supplies and a lack of diversification in the supply of vaccines.

"At the beginning of the pandemic, I would have told them that Brazil would be the first country in Latin America to vaccinate its population because we know how to do it," said Natalia Pasternak, a microbiologist and advocate for Brazilian health services.

“We have all the infrastructure we need.

Now we just need a better president.

Federal health officials in Brazil initially announced an implementation plan similar to that of many other major countries.

It would manufacture the AstraZeneca vaccine in the country, producing about 30 million doses by the end of January 2021.

Some 200 million more would be produced by the end of the year, administered first to health workers and the elderly and then in the future.

in order of vulnerability.

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The Government of Brazil clearly placed its initial hopes on the AstraZeneca vaccine.

But their vaccine trials took longer than others, a perfectly normal and predictable possibility given the unprecedented nature of COVID-19 vaccine development.

Brazil's vaccine regulatory agency finally granted emergency use authorization for AstraZeneca's vaccine on January 17, but the lack of the active ingredient needed to make the vaccine means that Brazilian labs have yet to begin production of the hundreds millions of doses you need.

Supplies are due to start arriving this week, but the delay has all but wiped out the government's schedule.

There is no set date for when finished doses will begin shipping.

While large countries with similar purchasing power brokered deals last year to buy other vaccines from companies like Moderna and Sinovac, Brazil held firm.

Brazil's health minister even rejected an offer from Pfizer in August to buy up to 70 million doses of its vaccine.

The ministry defended the decision, saying it was partly concerned about a payment guarantee and an agreement that contractual matters be handled in a US court.

"This is why you don't put all your eggs in one basket," Pasternak said.

"There is no reasonable explanation for not planning in advance how you are going to vaccinate your population."

Still, Bolsonaro recently said that no government "would do better than my government."

Bolsonaro's radical change on China

Brazil's best hope for a short-term vaccine supply is probably the CoronaVac vaccine, developed by the Chinese firm Sinovac.

Regulators approved its emergency use on January 17, and the Bolsonaro administration approved the purchase of 100 million doses.

It's an ironic result after Bolsonaro spent months attacking the vaccine, sometimes suggesting that the product developed in China could kill or disable those taking it, claims made without evidence.

He was inclined to discredit the vaccine when São Paulo Governor João Doria, a key political rival and likely contender in the 2022 presidential race, embraced it.

Doria turned Bolsonaro's administration around and negotiated directly with China for the Sinovac vaccine, ultimately securing millions of doses.

Doria says the president's inaction to secure supplies forced him to do so.

"In Brazil, we have to fight two viruses, the coronavirus and the Bolsonaro virus," Doria said in an interview.

The journey through an oxygen tank in Brazil 1:50

Doria was forced to turn over his state's supply of the Chinese-made vaccine to the federal government.

"We must [vaccinate] faster than we are going now," he said.

"We need more vaccines, but this responsibility lies with the federal government."

Both men may stick with a vaccine that appears to be less effective than others.

Recent data shows that the CoronaVac vaccine is 50.4 percent effective, exceeding the WHO guideline of 50 percent by a minimal margin.

Bolsonaro has said that in addition to the purchase agreements already in place, his administration would purchase vaccines as they became available.

It's a vague statement, considering that vaccines are among the most sought-after commodities in the world.

Anger, frustration and helplessness

The confusion and frustration over the application of the vaccine in Brazil comes at a time when the outbreak in Brazil has never been worse.

In addition to the total daily increases in cases and deaths that are among the highest in the pandemic so far, a new variant of Covid-19 has emerged that epidemiologists say is easier to transmit and could be more lethal.

  • Colombia confirms first cases of covid-19 with Brazilian variant

Vaccines are needed more than ever, but right now, that supply simply doesn't exist.

Júlio César Barbosa, a nurse who works at a public hospital in São Paulo, has volunteered to vaccinate people, but says he feels helpless amid the shortage.

"I am worried and angry with our government because from the beginning they have trivialized this virus."

CNN's Natalie Gallón contributed to this report.

BrazilJair BolsonaroCoronavirus vaccine

Source: cnnespanol

All news articles on 2021-02-02

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