Brazil to sign second contract with Pfizer and have a total of 200 million doses from the lab

After receiving Thursday a million doses vaccine from the American laboratory Pfizer, first batch of a 100 million euro contract, and Brazil is about to sign another contract more for the same amount. The signing of this new agreement it would be imminent, as reported by Globo, which cites the Minister of Health as the source.

Health official Marcelo Queiroga said on Monday that the federal government is ready” to enter into the new contract with Pfizer for the purchase of more than 100 million doses of the vaccine.

Currently, the existing agreement provides for the delivery of 100 million doses until September.

The second agreement, says Queiroga, provides for the delivery of 35 million doses in October alone. The minister said he hoped to vaccinate half of the population with the Pfizer vaccine in 2021. The statement was made during an event at Fiesp headquarters in São Paulo.

In other words, Brazil will have 200 million doses of the Pfizer immunizer. That equates to vaccinating about half of its population this year, as this second contract provides for 35 million doses of Pfizer by October, Queiroga said.

Marcelo Queiroga also said on Monday that the federal government wanted to expand screening of Brazilians and mentioned the a “quarantine policy”. The country has been living with the coronavirus pandemic since March 2020, but, so far, there is no national coordination for these two types of measures.

The Minister defended a strategy to implement measures to fight the pandemic in public transport. He claimed that the capacity of buses, subways and planes contributes to the circulation of the virus. He also suggested considering a specific policy for hospital workers to use specific vehicles for work, to avoid crossing crowds on public transport.

Pfizer was approved for permanent use in March by the National Health Surveillance Agency (Anvisa) and will need to deliver an additional 99 million doses through September.

The country vaccinated 41 million people with the 50 million doses it has received since January 17, 90% of them come from CoronaVac, the Chinese laboratory Sinovac and the rest from AstraZeneca.

The arrival of the doses of Pfizer comes after Anvisa rejected the approval of Sputnik V for reasons of medical safety and lack of documentation.

400 thousand dead

Brazil topped 400,000 coronavirus deaths on Thursday after being the country with the most daily deaths from March 9 to April 25, and maintains an average of 2,500 deaths per day in the past seven days.

Since the first contagion on February 26 and the first death on March 12, both in São Paulo, the country now has 14,725,975 confirmed cases and a total of 406,437 deaths.

The Ministry of Health, in its latest epidemiological bulletin, indicated that between Friday and Saturday, there was a slight decrease in the number of daily deaths (-2.35%) and the number of infected (-2.00 %) compared to the previous 24. hours.

The “South American giant” lived in April the deadliest month among the fourteen of the pandemic.

According to the official report, in the country of nearly 212 million inhabitants, 13,242,665 patients of the new coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 have been recovered, representing 89.9% of the total infected.

In addition, 1,076,873 patients are under medical supervision in hospitals or in their residences after having tested positive in clinical tests.

Brazil, one of the three countries in the world most affected by the pandemic in absolute numbers along with the United States and India, has a death rate of 193 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants and an incidence of 7,007 infected people in the same proportion.

Clarín editorial staff

ap