Brazil announced the purchase of 100 million doses of the vaccine from Pfizer against COVID-19 and 38 million from Johnson & Johnson

The Brazilian government announced on Monday the purchase of 100 million doses of Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine, which would start arriving in the country in April. Health Minister Eduardo Pazuello also said a contract had also been signed with Johnson & Johnson to acquire 38 million of its inoculants, which require a single dose.

The official assured that the South American country had obtained a total of 562 million doses by the end of the year, with some of the inoculants requiring two injections and others only one.

The agreement with Pfizer has already been sent to the United States for analysis by the pharmaceutical company in charge of distribution and it is expected that it will be returned without major changes for the final section.

According to local media, the final shipment schedule indicates that the first shipment, of a million doses, will take place in April. 2.5 million will arrive in May, 10 in June and July, respectively, and the big one will arrive in August and September, with 30 and 46.5 million.

Johnson & Johnson, meanwhile, won’t start until the third quarter, when 16.9 million doses are shipped. The other 21 will arrive in the last three months of the year.

Immunization of Pfizer already has full authorization from the National Health Surveillance Agency (Anvisa) and, therefore, it can be applied to Brazilians, but the acquisition of the doses remained to be specified.

The government of President Jair Bolsonaro, one of the leaders who denies the severity of the pandemic, has been negotiating the purchase of vaccines with Pfizer for months, but talks have not advanced due to certain clauses in the contract.

As explained by the Minister of Health, Eduardo Pazuello, talks were able to continue thanks to the approval of a bill that eases the purchase of vaccines and it provides that governments can be sued for possible ill effects caused by the application of antidotes, exonerating the laboratories of all responsibility. “It will now be possible to incorporate new vaccines that previously presented legal obstacles,” said Pazuello.

Pfizer and BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine has shown a great ability to neutralize the rapidly spreading strain of coronavirus in Brazil, according to a new study, but the research has been conducted in lab tests and there is still no large-scale data on its effectiveness against the variant.

So far, Brazil has vaccinated with the Oxford / AstraZeneca and Chinese Sinovac formulations, adding 11.4 million doses applied, or 4% of the population.

For about a month and a half, the average daily mortality in Brazil from the virus has not fallen below one thousand (last week it reached nearly 2,000) and that from infections is 50,000 per day.

The resurgence of the disease has left most Brazilian states on the brink of health collapse due to the rebound in coronavirus hospitalizations after year-end crowds and carnival festivities.

KEEP READING: