Brazil obtains the first active ingredients for AstraZeneca vaccine in China

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) – A first shipment of 88 liters of active ingredients to make AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine in Brazil arrived on Saturday from China, essential to speed up the country’s struggling vaccination program.

With these supplies flown to Rio de Janeiro on a cargo plane, the Fiocruz Biomedical Center can begin to fill and complete 2.8 million doses. The federally-funded center expects to receive more ingredients this month to achieve a total of 15 million injections of the vaccine developed with the University of Oxford.

The Fiocruz production line, which was originally scheduled to start production in December, has been idle due to delays in delivering the first shipment of supplies from China.

The AstraZeneca Plc vaccine is the central pillar of Brazil’s national inoculation program, and the federal government has ordered equipment for Fiocruz to make up to 100 million vaccines.

To start vaccinating its 210 million people, Brazil initially relied on the Chinese vaccine developed by Sinovac Biotech Ltd and 2 million ready-to-use AstraZeneca vaccines imported from India last month.

Pfizer Inc on Friday applied for full regulatory approval in Brazil for its COVID-19 vaccine developed with BioNTech Se, the company said.

This is the second vaccine submitted for registration in Brazil. AstraZeneca filed for full regulatory approval for its vaccine on January 29.

President Jair Bolsonaro, who says he will not take any COVID-19 vaccine, is under pressure after a slow and erratic rollout of the vaccine in Brazil, which now faces a second wave of infections.

Bolsonaro has called the virus a “little flu,” but his government faces mounting criticism for its handling of the world’s second deadliest coronavirus outbreak, which has killed more than 231,000 Brazilians.

Sao Paulo’s Butantan Biomedical Institute said on Saturday it had started filling and completing 8.6 million doses of the Sinovac vaccine called Coronavac with ingredients that arrived from China on Wednesday.

Butantan said he expects to receive another supply of ingredients on Wednesday to make an additional 8.7 million doses.