Death Toll Rises, Brazilian Senate Suspends COVID-19 Vaccine Patent Protection

JAKARTA - The Brazilian Senate on Thursday, April 29 local time approved a draft law (RUU), to suspend patent protection for the COVID-19 vaccine, tests, and drugs during the pandemic, sending proposals to the lower house of Congress for consideration and possible amendments.

It remains unclear whether lower house lawmakers will pass the bill, with implications for pharmaceutical companies such as AstraZeneca and China Sinovac Biotech which have implemented local production of the COVID-19 vaccine in Brazil.

Meanwhile, US COVID-19 vaccine producer Pfizer also made its first shipment to Brazil on Thursday evening.

Earlier, President Jair Bolsonaro's government publicly opposed a proposal to suspend patent protection. President Bolsonaro said such a move could jeopardize talks with vaccine manufacturers.

Brazil recorded the death toll from the COVID-19 pandemic past 400.000, the second-highest tally in the world after the United States, on Thursday.

Experts say this is due to the slow rollout of the vaccine in Brazil, which has kept the daily death rate high for months.

"We can't keep on passively watching, day after day, 3.000 to 5.000 deaths. There is a chance, we have to do our part", Senator Nelsinho Trad, one of the bill's supporters, told Reuters on Friday, April 30.

According to the bill, patent holders are required to provide all the information needed to produce vaccines and drugs for COVID-19 to the authorities.

Then, if the government calls for a state of emergency, they can be produced locally under a license agreement. The goal, according to Senator Paulo Paim, who drafted the bill, is to streamline vaccine production in order to speed up injection.

There were no immediate comments from the Office of the Presidency and the Brazilian Ministry of Health.