The Union Court of Accounts (TCU), the supervisory body of the Brazilian State and linked to Congress, determined this Thursday to investigate the waste of millions of anti-covid vaccines during the management of now former President Jair Bolsonaro.
In a statement, the TCU indicated that it created a Special Commission to investigate “irregularities” in the storage of vaccines, medicines, supplies and diagnostic tests that had a specific expiration date. (Also read: Pay attention! Nequi will maintain the app: we will tell you the date and time)
The measure was taken at the request of a group of deputies who denounced that with the waste of this sanitary material the State lost 243 million reais (about 48.6 million dollars).
According to the report, almost two million doses of vaccines that had been donated, but for which Brazil paid for transportation, customs procedures, storage, and final incineration, were “discarded.”
It will also be investigated, among other inputs, for the “possible loss” of 1.8 million covid-19 diagnostic tests, purchased for 78 million reais (about 15.6 million dollars).
Faced with the “logistical failures” of the previous management, the TCU recommended that the Ministry of Health prepare a report on the “current condition” of the vaccines in existence within ten days and within three months deliver an action plan to improve logistics. (Also read: They find cartridges in a UNP van assigned to a congressman)
Brazil has been one of the countries hardest hit in the world by the pandemic, which so far, three years after the first case, has caused the death of some 699,000 Brazilians and 37 million infections.
During the pandemic, the Senate went so far as to establish a Parliamentary Investigation Commission (CPI) to investigate the responsibility of the previous government in its health management and Bolsonaro’s denialist attitude.
