India has postponed shipment of 2 million AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccines

In an attempt to speed up the vaccination plan, the Brazilian government was preparing to send a plane to India in search of two million AstraZeneca vaccines against the coronavirus. But, at the last minute, Asian authorities reported that the sale had been postponed because it still could not “supply other countries”.

Asked about the export to Brazil, which had already prepared for the departure of the flight on Friday, the spokesperson for the Indian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that “the vaccination process begins in India and it is too early to give an answer on the offer to other countries “.

The request for the vaccines was made by Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro himself to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Ahead of the Indian government’s announcement, sources from the Ministry of Health told CNN Brazil that the departure of the plane to Mumbai to transport the vaccines had been postponed.

Brazilian Health Minister Eduardo Pazuello had announced that AstraZeneca vaccines, along with Chinese Coronavac, would be part of the first phase of vaccination which can begin on January 20.

The Brazilian National Health Surveillance Agency (Anvisa) will present this Sunday its opinion on the validity of the AstraZeneca and Chinese vaccines, to launch the emergency vaccination.

During a return trip to Bombay which was to travel more than 15,000 kilometers, the plane had already taken off Thursday afternoon from Viracopos airport, in the state of Sao Paulo, responsible for special containers to transport the doses of the immunizer.

The plane, an Airbus of the Brazilian company Azul, took off at 4:52 p.m. local time (19:52 GMT), nearly four hours after the government announced the day before, to the northeastern city of Recife, where it made stopover.

According to a statement released Thursday by the Ministry of Health, problems related to “international logistics” delayed the departure of the flight from Recife to Mumbai, the plane was therefore to make the trip to the Indian city on Friday.

The Brazilian Ministry of Health had indicated that the two million doses of vaccine from the Anglo-Swedish laboratory AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford had an estimated weight of 15 tons and would be stored in containers that will ensure temperature control. until arrival. in Rio de Janeiro.

The arrival of the cargo in Rio de Janeiro was initially scheduled for this Saturday, but the antidote which is produced in Bombay by the Indian laboratory Serum will not finally reach its destination after the decision to suspend supplies.

This Thursday, Brazil has recorded more than 1,000 deaths due to the coronavirus for the third day in a row, having suffered 1,131 deaths in the past 24 hours, bringing the total to 207,095.

According to the Ministry of Health, 67,758 new cases have been recorded since Wednesday, the third day in a row with more than 60,000 infections, bringing the total number of positive cases recorded in the country to 8,324,294.

The state of Sao Paulo, the most populous in the country, is also the most affected, with 1,590,829 cases and 49,289 deaths, followed by Rio de Janeiro with 473,648 registrations and 27,441 deaths.

With agency information.

JPE