Brazil received one million doses of Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine

Brazil received one million doses of Pfizer vaccine on Thursday, the first shipment of a 100 million unit contract with which the government of President Jair Bolsonaro seeks to speed up the slow vaccination process in one of the countries in the world most affected by the pandemic.

The filler, manufactured in Belgium by the German company BioNTech and the American pharmaceutical company Pfizer, arrived at Viracopos international airport, in Campinas, inside the state of São Paulo, and will be distributed nationwide between this Friday and Saturday, due to storage needs.

Last year, during the first wave of the pandemic, Brazilian government rejected initial offer to acquire 70 million doses of Pfizer, the first antigen to obtain official registration with the health regulator of the South American country.

Bolsonaro, one of the leaders most denouncing the severity of the virus, went so far as to publicly criticize Pfizer’s contract proposals, since the laboratory does not want to take responsibility for any side effects, and initially opposed its purchase.

However, the government eventually gave in to the worsening health crisis in the country and this year concluded an agreement with the company., at a time when vaccination is progressing slowly in the country for lack of doses.

Currently, Brazil has vaccines developed by the Chinese laboratory Sinovac and the University of Oxford in collaboration with AstraZeneca, but the vaccines available are not sufficient to protect the entire population.

Until, 15% of 212 million Brazilians received the first dose and 7% the full diet.

The lack of vaccines in the country is one of the fronts that will be addressed by the parliamentary committee which is investigating the responsibility of the government of Jair Bolsonaro in the worsening of the health crisis, which already claims 400,000 deaths and 14.6 million people. case.

The members of the said commission agreed on Thursday that next week, the Minister of Health, Marcelo Queiroga, and his three predecessors in office will declare it.

(With information from EFE)

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