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Brazil received this Thursday the first batch of 120,000 doses of CoronaVac vaccine, developed by the Chinese laboratory Sinovac Biotech, as announced by the government of San Pablo. “This is a very important step,” said State Governor Joao Doria from Sao Paulo airport.
The vaccine arrived in Brazil thanks to an agreement with the Butantan Institute, attached to the government of São Paulo, and is the subject of a dispute between President Jair Bolsonaro and Doria, his former ally and current political rival.
The confrontation escalated last week, when the national health monitoring agency (Anvisa) suspended the trial on volunteers in Brazil for 48 hours, arguing “a serious incident” occurred during the test.
Bolsonaro celebrated on social networks the end of the study, and the regional authorities of São Paulo, as well as the directive of the Butantan Institute, expressed their “indignation” and guaranteed that the incident was not related to the investigational drug.
What motivated the suspension of the tests was the suicide of a volunteer participating in the trial, but Anvisa immediately authorized them to be taken back. After the episode, the health authority explained that suspensions in this phase of the study are common and that “does not necessarily mean that the product under investigation is not of quality, safe or effective”.
Sinovac vaccine
The agreement between Sinovac and the Butantan Institute envisages shipping a total of 6 million doses by the end of the year, as well as the delivery of raw materials to manufacture 40 million additional doses in São Paulo, according to the regional government. Anvisa authorization is required for the application of the vaccine in Brazil.
CoronaVac is one of the most advanced vaccines in the world, very close to the American pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, which presented intermediate phase 3 results showing an effectiveness “of more than 90%”.
Sinovac vaccine is also in phase 3 trials in humans, the last step before its approval, which involves thousands of volunteers in Brazil, Indonesia and Turkey.
China authorized in July, for “urgent” cases, the administration of experimental vaccines. At least hundreds of thousands of Chinese have already received the Sinovac vaccine or those from the Sinopharm public laboratory.
Brazil, with 211 million inhabitants, has more than 167,000 deaths and nearly 6 million infected with the new virus. São Paulo, the country’s most populous state, has more than 1.1 million cases and nearly 41,000 deaths from the disease.
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