Opponents of vaccines? Not in Toledo:
Pharmaceutical manufacturer Pfizer announced this week that it is launching a campaign to vaccinate all city residents over the age of 12, with the aim of conducting research on the safety and efficacy of the vaccine among children.
According to officials, about 98% of the city's residents in southwestern Brazil have received at least one dose of Corona vaccine and most have received Pfizer's vaccine.
According to the announcement, the company will work with local health officials, hospitals, universities and Brazil's national immunization program to monitor the transmission of the corona virus in a scenario that simulates real life after the entire population has been vaccinated.
It was also reported that the study will follow the participants for about a year, in order to understand the maximum time of immune protection after receiving the vaccine against the corona virus in all its versions.
The study comes after an experiment in vaccinating almost all adults in the southeastern city of Sarna by the vaccine of the Chinese pharmaceutical company Sinobak.
This experiment is considered the first mass experiment of its kind, in which an entire town was vaccinated against the corona virus.
The experiment in Sarna, a city of 45,000 people, was conducted over three months - in winter and spring.
It was a dizzying success with steep declines in new cases, hospitalizations and deaths, at a time when the rest of Brazil was under epidemic.
Burial of the dead from Corona in Brazil, Photo: AP
As you may recall, Brazil suffered severely from the virus, with one of the highest deaths in the world.
According to the New York Times database, about 600,000 people in the state have died from the plague.
This is the second largest number of deaths in the world, immediately after the United States, in which more than 710,000 people died as a result of the virus and its complications.
The mayor of Toledo, Beto Luniti, said after the announcement: "We believe in science and mourn almost 600,000 deaths as a result of the corona virus in Brazil."
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, however, was ambivalent about the importance of vaccines.
Many Brazilians have expressed outrage over the slowness with which their government has acquired vaccines and the corruption scandal involving vaccine deals.