In Brazil, they suspended the purchase of 37 million doses of the Sputnik V vaccine

The regional governments of the nine northeastern states of Brazil announced on Thursday the temporary suspension of the contract that they had signed with the Gamaleya Institute and the Russian Sovereign Fund to import 37 million doses of the Sputnik V vaccine against the coronavirus.

The suspension is due to the fact that Brazilian health authorities have approved the use of Sputnik V in Brazil with various 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 “a few specific lots” and on an “exceptional and temporary” basis.

The regulatory body has established a series of “conditions” for the use of the Russian vaccine in Brazil and limited its application to 1% of the population in each of the northeastern states.

The suspension of the contract was announced in a statement from Consorcio Nordeste, the forum that brings together the governors of the nine states in northeastern Brazil, the poorest in the country.

According to the Northeast Consortium, the suspension of the contract came at a time when the delivery of the first batch of a million vaccines was expected due to “new limitations imposed by Anvisa, the non-inclusion of the vaccine in the Plan National Vaccination. and no import license“.

So far, the only vaccines included in the national vaccination plan are those from the AstraZeneca, Sinovac, Pfizer and Janssen laboratories, the use of which has been authorized by Anvisa.

“It’s unfortunate. Brazil is experiencing a high mortality situation, with around a thousand deaths per day, and we have vaccines available, but prevented from entering the country by an Anvisa decision,” said the Governor of the State of Piauí, Wellington Dias. , president of the Northeast Consortium.

Dias said the contract will be suspended until Anvisa allows the vaccine to be used permanently and unconditionally.

“We had already suspended the delivery of the first vaccines and now we agree to suspend the contract until we have the authorization and release of Sputnik V in Brazil, ”he added.

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

Anvisa, in a statement released on Thursday, clarified that it made the importation of Sputnik conditional on compliance with 22 requirements given the need to “fill the gaps in the existing information concerning aspects of quality, safety and vaccine 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 infectionsIt is the second country with the most victims of the pandemic and the third with the most cases, only surpassed by the United States and India.

Despite these high figures, the weekly average of deaths fell on Thursday to 887 per day, its lowest level in nearly seven months, and that of infections to 32,460 per day, the lowest in eight months.

The decline in cases and deaths coincides with the acceleration of the vaccination process in Brazil, where nearly 50% of the population has already received the first dose some vaccines and 21% both doses or the single dose vaccine.

Source: EFE