What is the vaccination situation in Brazil? 3:15
Sao Paulo . – 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 ring and buzz, nurses and doctors scramble as they rush into the bedroom of an elderly man who sucks in the air that does not come. The decision to intubate is taken quickly. This is their only chance to survive, which is far from guaranteed.
Among the half-dozen people in the room, nurse Mónica Aparecida Calazans says she has already seen too many dead. “I have already lost eight of my colleagues to covid,” he said. “It is a very cruel disease.”
The Calazans risk their lives every day to fight a pandemic that Brazil is far from controlling. However, in a way, he is lucky.
In mid-January, Calazans was the first Brazilian to receive a vaccine, which is no small feat in a country where vaccination has been simply disastrous.
As of Sunday, only 0.5% of the country’s population had received a first dose of AstraZeneca or Sinovac vaccines. Not a single person in Brazil has been fully vaccinated except for a few who have participated in clinical vaccine trials.
In addition, vaccine stocks are extremely limited, and there remains a surprising lack of detail in the government’s plans for more.
“I would have said that Brazil would be the first”
In June 2020, few people thought that Brazil would have such a hard time with the 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 successful vaccination of its population.
But several experts say the ineptitude of the federal government, led by President Jair Bolsonaro, a covid-19 skeptic, has sabotaged its response to the coronavirus. They point to a clear lack of urgency on the part of the federal government to ensure supplies and a lack of diversification in the supply of vaccines.
“At the start of the pandemic, I would have told them that Brazil would be the first Latin American country to vaccinate its population because we know how to do it,” said Natalia Pasternak, 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 many other major countries. It is said to manufacture the AstraZeneca vaccine in the country, producing around 30 million doses by the end of January 2021.
Some 200 million more would be produced by the end of the year, delivered first to health workers and the elderly, then in the future. in order of vulnerability.
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The Brazilian government has 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 authorization for emergency use of AstraZeneca’s vaccine on January 17, but the lack of the active ingredient needed to make the vaccine means Brazilian labs have failed. not yet started producing the hundreds of millions of doses you need.
Supplies are expected to start arriving this week, but the delay has all but wiped out the government’s schedule. There is no fixed date for when finished doses will start shipping.
While large countries with similar purchasing power negotiated deals last year to buy more vaccines from companies like Moderna and Sinovac, Brazil has 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 with a payment guarantee and an agreement that contractual issues would be dealt with in a US court.
“That’s why you don’t put all of 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.”
Yet Bolsonaro recently said no government “would do better than my government.”
Bolsonaro’s radical change in China
Perhaps Brazil’s best hope for a short-term vaccine supply is the CoronaVac vaccine, developed by Chinese company 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 who take it, according to unsubstantiated claims.
He was inclined to discredit the vaccine when São Paulo governor João Doria, a key political rival and possibly 2022 presidential candidate, adopted it.
Doria overthrew the Bolsonaro administration and negotiated directly with China for the Sinovac vaccine, ultimately getting millions of doses. Doria says the president’s inaction to secure supplies has forced her to do so. “In Brazil, we have to fight against two viruses, the coronavirus and the Bolsonaro virus,” Doria said in an interview.
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Doria was forced to turn her state’s supply of Chinese-made vaccine over to the federal government. “We must [vacunar] faster than we go now, ”he said. “We need more vaccines, but that responsibility lies with the federal government.”
Both men can stick with one vaccine that seems less effective than the others. Recent data shows the CoronaVac vaccine to be 50.4 percent effective, exceeding the WHO guideline of 50 percent by a minimal margin.
Bolsonaro said that in addition to the purchase agreements already in place, his administration will purchase the vaccines as soon as they are available. This is a vague statement, given that vaccines are among the most sought after products 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 epidemic in Brazil has never been worse.
In addition to the total daily increase in cases and deaths which are among the highest in the pandemic to date, a new variant of Covid-19 has emerged that epidemiologists say is easier to transmit and could be more deadly.
Vaccines are needed more than ever, but right now that supply simply does not 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 in the face of the shortage.
“I am worried and angry with our government because from the start they have trivialized this virus.”
CNN’s Natalie Gallón contributed to this report.
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