An elderly person will be vaccinated against COVID-19 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, March 6, 2021. (Photo by Luciana Whitaker / Xinhua)
SÃO PAULO, March 22nd (Xinhua) – The Brazilian government announced on Sunday that it would accelerate the immunization campaign. All vaccines stored in the municipalities should be released for immediate use.
“We will double the vaccinations this week and immunize a large number of Brazilian citizens,” said Health Minister Eduardo Pazuello in a statement.
According to the announcement, the decision was made against the background that the Butantane Institute in São Paulo and the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz) are likely to be able to accelerate their vaccine production.
The Butantane Institute imported the CoronaVac vaccine from the Chinese laboratory Sinovac and produced it on site, while Fiocruz produced the vaccine from AstraZeneca and Oxford University using imported ingredients.
Since the start of the vaccination campaign on January 17, Brazilian states and municipalities have had to withhold half of the doses received for the second round of vaccination.
Brazil’s Ministry of Health received five million doses of vaccine last weekend. Of these, 3.9 million CoronaVac vaccine doses were produced by the Butantane Institute and 1,051,750 doses by Fiocruz.
More than 11.7 million people in Brazil have already received the first vaccination against COVID-19, while 4.1 million people have been fully immunized.
As of Sunday, Brazil had 11,998,233 confirmed COVID-19 cases, including 294,042 deaths.
(according to Xinhua News Agency)
– .
