Picky ‘vaccine sommeliers’ undermine Brazil vaccination campaign, experts say

RIO DE JANEIRO / SAO PAULO, July 9 (Reuters) – A question walked the queue outside a makeshift vaccination center in the Copacabana seaside district of Rio de Janeiro recently: “What vaccine are they using?”

Despite the second number of deaths and infections in the world, Brazilians refuse to be vaccinated if the vaccine used is not to their satisfaction.

Local media have dubbed them “the vaccine sommeliers”.

There are no official figures on the total number of people who choose their vaccines, but dozens of cities in Brazil have sought to crack down on the practice, taking the names of those who refuse to be vaccinated with the proposed vaccine. and moving them to the back of the queue.

Public health experts in Brazil say the practice and misinformation – or misunderstood information – that feeds it, threatens to undermine the country’s vaccination campaign.

It is also, they say, very selfish.

“The person puts himself in danger and ends up putting the whole system in danger,” said Alexandre Naime Barbosa, professor of infectious diseases at São Paulo State University. “It shows a lack of empathy, enormous selfishness.”

The trend comes as many countries have already vaccinated most of their populations and are lifting restrictions.

The Brazilian Vaccination Society said most of the incidents involve people refusing vaccines from Chinese Sinovac (SVA.O) or – to a lesser extent – Astrazeneca (AZN.L). Instead, they’re looking for shots from Pfizer (PFE.N) and Johnson & Johnson (JNJ.N).

WhatsApp groups have popped up with people exchanging advice on which immunization centers offer the most wanted vaccines.

Some are concerned that Sinovac’s CoronaVac may not work as well, while others are concerned that Europe and the United States will not recognize it as travel restrictions are lifted for people who are fully vaccinated.

Brazilian health experts are rushing to allay concerns, especially over CoronaVac, fighting a wave of criticism, including from President Jair Bolsonaro who said of the use of the Chinese vaccine earlier this month: “It did not work”.

Advanced stage trials in Brazil have shown CoronaVac to be 50% effective in preventing symptomatic infections, compared to 76% for Astrazeneca and 95% for Pfizer.

But in a real world, public health experts argue here, CoronaVac has been shown to be very effective in reducing hospitalizations and deaths.

“When you look at what really matters, reducing the number of hospitalizations and deaths, all of the vaccines that we have in Brazil have very high efficacy,” Barbosa said.

In Serrana, a city in the state of Sao Paulo, where almost the entire adult population was vaccinated with CoronaVac as part of a study, deaths were reduced by 95%. Hospitalizations fell by 86% and symptomatic infections by 80%.

Public health experts have also pointed out that the risk of developing blood clots as a result of taking the Astrazeneca vaccine is incredibly rare.

No vaccine, scientists point out, ever completely eliminates the risk of death.

“Choosing your vaccine is an ignorant gesture that lacks commitment to public health,” said Dimas Covas, president of the Butantan Institute which produces CoronaVac in Brazil.

Report by Pedro Fonseca in Rio de Janeiro and Eduardo Simoes in Sao Paulo, written by Stephen Eisenhammer; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama

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