“The Brazilian people will not be anyone’s guinea pig … That is why I have decided not to buy this vaccine,” Bolsonaro wrote on his Facebook page Wednesday, refuting reports that the Ministry of Health would buy 46 million doses of the vaccine. . vaccine that the governor of São Paulo recently described as the “most promising”.
The companies behind five of the ten vaccines currently in late-stage phase III trials are testing their candidates in the South American country because they need a high infection rate to determine if their experimental doses work. Early last week, Brazilian officials pointed to their favorite: Sinovac’s candidate CoronaVac.
The day after Doria declared CoronaVac to be “the most promising,” Health Minister Eduardo Pazuello announced that the federal government would purchase 46 million doses of the vaccine from the national immunization program. The deal depends on the vaccine obtaining approval from the federal drug regulator Anvisa.
Bolsonaro mocked CoronaVac as “João Doria’s Chinese vaccine” in response to a question from Facebook about it, and said “for sure we will not buy the Chinese vaccine.”
Later that day, the Health Ministry said in a statement that the reports about the purchase of 46 million doses were a “misinterpretation” of Pazuello’s comments. According to the statement, the ministry had simply signed a “non-binding memorandum of understanding” with the Butantan Institute to purchase the vaccines.
Brazil registered its first case of coronavirus on February 25, a day before the United States detected its first case of person-to-person transmission. Since then, Brazil has racked up one of the highest numbers of COVID-19 cases in the world.
For its part, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China has highlighted that China remains committed to working with Brazil in the development of a vaccine.
“With phase III of the clinical trials of the vaccine launched jointly by both parties progressing smoothly in Brazil.
Brazil’s internal debate over the Chinese vaccine may turn out to be a microcosm of how the global vaccine race will unfold in the coming months.
Yanzhong Huang, senior global health researcher at the Council on Foreign Relations, told Us this week that tensions between the United States and China during COVID-19 have created conditions conducive to a “divided” vaccine world.
