Brazil suspends purchase of 37 million Sputnik V vaccines

Regional governments of the nine northeastern states of Brazil announced the provisional suspension the contract they had signed with the Gamaleya Institute and the Russian Sovereign Fund to import 37 million doses of Sputnik V vaccine against the coronavirus.

The suspension was due to the fact that the Brazilian health authorities approved the use of Russian serum in Brazil but with several restrictions, since the Ministry of Health has not included this vaccine in its national vaccination campaign.

The National Health Surveillance Agency (Anvisa) authorized the import of Russian Sputnik V vaccines in June, but only “Some specific lots” and shape “Exceptional and temporary”.

The regulatory body set up a series of “conditions” for the use of the Russian vaccine in Brazil, and limited its application to only 1% of inhabitants in each of the northeastern states.

The suspension of the contract was announced by a statement from the Northeast Consortium, the forum that brings together the leaders of the nine neighborhoods of this region, the poorest from the country.

According to this consortium, the interruption of the contract occurred at a time when the delivery of the first batch with a million of vaccines given the “new limitations imposed by Anvisa, the non-inclusion of the vaccine in the national vaccination plan and the lack of an import license”. So far, the only vaccines included in the National Vaccination Plan are those from laboratories. AstraZeneca, Sinovac, Pfizer and Janssen, whose use has been authorized by Anvisa.

“He is regrettable. Brazil is experiencing a situation with high mortality, with about a thousand deaths per day, and we have vaccines available, but prevented from entering the country by a decision of Anvisa ”, declared the governor of the State of Piauí, Wellington Dias, president of the North-East Consortium.

Dias said the contract will be suspended until Anvisa authorizes the use of the serum in a permanent and unconditional. “We had already suspended the delivery of the first vaccines, and now we agree to suspend the contract until we have the authorization and the release of Sputnik V in Brazil,” he added.

For its part, the Russian Sovereign Fund has indicated that the doses that would be sent to Brazil will now be distributed in Mexico, Argentina and Bolivia.

In turn, and in a statement released Thursday, Anvisa clarified that she made the importation of Sputnik conditional on compliance with 22 requests faced with the need to “fulfill the lagoons existing information on aspects of vaccine quality, safety and efficacy ”.

“Anvisa affirms that it has not added any other conditions” and stresses that “it has been guided by absolute transparency in all its decisions in favor of the protection of the health of the population,” the note said.

Brazil, with more than 560,000 deaths and 20 million infections, it’s him second country with the most pandemic victims and the third with the most cases, only surpassed by the United States and India.