The Oswaldo Foundation Cruz (Fiocruz), the largest medical research center in Latin America and linked to Brazilian Ministry of Health, began this Monday, March 8, 2021, the large-scale production of the vaccine anticovid of AstraZeneca with the forecast of manufacturing up to a million doses per day.
Fiocruz, which started the industrial-scale manufacture of the vaccine a week late due to the problems it had in one of its machines, initially began to produce small batches but its intention is to reach its production capacity by the end of March, which is of a million doses per day.
Thanks to a technology transfer agreement, the research center and laboratory has the rights to manufacture and distribute the vaccine against the covid jointly developed by the Anglo-Swiss pharmaceutical company AstroZeneca and the University of Oxford.
The production forecasts were disclosed during the visit that the Minister of Brazil Health, Eduardo Pazuello, made this Tuesday at the Fiocruz facilities in Rio de Janeiro.
According to Fiocruz representatives, the institution will deliver 3.8 million doses of the vaccine to the Ministry of Health in March alone, but that number will jump exponentially from April.
“The first production line went online today and is manufacturing 300,000 dose per day. This same week, if everything goes according to plan, a second production line will start operating. And the expectation is that we will arrive at the end of March with the two lines in operation and a production of about one million doses per day, “according to a statement from Fiocruz.
The institution also reported that it has already sent the National Health Surveillance Agency (Anvisa) the documentation necessary for the regulatory body to permanently authorize the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine in Brazil.
The nearly 4 million doses of the antidote distributed so far in Brazil, imported from India, have been applied thanks to Anvisa granting it authorization for the provisional use of the immunizer.
The expectation is that the definitive registration of the vaccine will be granted this week.
In addition to the AstraZeneca vaccine, Brazil is using the antidote developed by the Chinese laboratory for its immunization campaign Sinovac, of which about 12 million doses have already been distributed.
The vaccine Sinovac will also be produced locally in Brazil thanks to a technology transfer agreement with the Institute Butantan, linked to the government of the state of Sao Paulo.
Brazil also reached agreements to acquire the vaccines developed by the laboratories Pfizer Y Modern, as well as the Russian Sputnik V.
So far, Brazil has vaccinated with the first dose about 8.5 million people, 4% of its population, but the Government’s forecast is that between April and June another 50 million doses of different antidotes will be distributed.
The vaccination campaign has progressed slowly so far despite the fact that the pandemic has worsened in Brazil, to the point that the average number of deaths in the last seven days surpassed the record of 1,500 per day on Tuesday.
The Latin American giant, with its 210 million inhabitants, accumulates 266,398 deaths and 11 million infections since it registered the first case, on February 26 of last year.
The high averages in recent days confirm Brazil as one of the epicenters of the pandemic and as the second country in number of Deaths, only surpassed by U.S, and the third in number of contagions, behind the US and India.
They also confirm that the Latin American giant It is currently suffering a new wave of the pandemic, more virulent and lethal, partly caused by the circulation of new strains of the virus, among which the Brazilian variant that originated in the Amazon.
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