Brazil announces it will launch “the biggest vaccination campaign in the world” on Wednesday

Brazilian Health Minister Eduardo Pazuello said on Sunday that after the regulator approves the emergency use of two vaccines in the country, Brazil will begin on Wednesday what he called “more major vaccination campaign “against Covid-19 in the world.

Pazuello told a press conference that after approval for the use of the vaccines, the health ministry would start distributing the six million doses of antidotes the country already has by early Monday morning, in military planes. that the country’s 27 states can begin vaccination simultaneously across Brazil on Wednesday.

The minister announced the start of the campaign a few minutes after the National Health Surveillance Agency (Anvisa) approved, by unanimous decision of its five directors, the emergency use of vaccines from the Chinese laboratory Sinovac and that developed jointly by the Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford.

“The first step has been taken to launch the world’s largest coronavirus vaccination campaign,” said Pazuello, celebrating Anvisa’s decision and stressing that Brazil has a consolidated vaccination program that serves the whole of the population, capable of immunizing up to one million people per day.

Anvisa’s decision now authorizes the use of six million Sinovac vaccines imported from China that have been packaged and labeled at the Butantan Institute in Sao Paulo, and two million doses of the antidote from the AstraZeneca laboratory that Brazil expects to receive this week from India.

Despite the fact that Pazuello announced on Wednesday the start of vaccination throughout the country, the government of Sao Paulo anticipated and, in a symbolic and controversial act, vaccinated a nurse from the public health network, which he turned into a the first Brazilian immune to the country’s coronavirus.

The early vaccination responded to the wish of the governor of Sao Paulo, Joao Doria, possible presidential candidate in 2022 and political rival of President Jair Bolsonaro, to make it understood that the production of the Chinese vaccine in Brazil through a technology transfer agreement at the Butantan Institute was his initiative.

“It is a triumph of science, a triumph of life against deniers, against those who prefer the smell of death to courage and the joy of living,” Doria said in a harsh speech full of critics at against Bolsonaro, leader of the Brazilian far right and that since the start of the pandemic has reduced the severity of the covid.