Brazil obtains its first active ingredients for AstraZeneca vaccine from China

By Sergio Queiroz

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) – A first shipment of 88 liters of active ingredients to make AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine in Brazil arrived from China on Saturday, an essential input to accelerate the country’s troubled vaccination program.

With those supplies brought to Rio de Janeiro on a cargo plane, the Fiocruz biomedical center can begin to finish 2.8 million doses. The federally funded center expects to receive more ingredients this month for a total of 15 million injections of the vaccine developed with the University of Oxford.

Fiocruz’s production line, originally scheduled to start production in December, has been idle due to delays in receiving the first shipment of supplies from China.

The AstraZeneca Plc vaccine is the central pillar of Brazil’s national inoculation program, and the federal government has ordered material for Fiocruz to make up to 100 million injections.

To begin inoculating its 210 million inhabitants, Brazil has initially relied on the Chinese vaccine developed by Sinovac Biotech Ltd and 2 million ready-to-use AstraZeneca injections that were imported from India last month. Pfizer Inc requested on Friday full regulatory approval in Brazil of its COVID-19 vaccine developed with BioNTech Se, the company said.

It is the second vaccine presented for registration in Brazil. AstraZeneca applied for full regulatory approval of its vaccine on January 29.

President Jair Bolsonaro, who says he will not be vaccinated against COVID-19, is under pressure following a slow and uneven launch of the vaccine in Brazil, which is now facing a second wave of infections.

The Bolsonaro government faces growing criticism for its handling of the world’s second deadliest coronavirus outbreak, which has killed more than 231,000 Brazilians.

(By Sergio Queiroz, written by Anthony Boadle; Edited in Spanish by Juana Casas)

–