Accelerating Vaccination Program, Brazil Adds Contract For Procurement Of COVID-19 Vaccines With Pfizer

COVID-19 Vaccination for the Elderly in Brazil. (Wikimedia Commons / Governo do Estado de São Paulo)

JAKARTA - Brazil has announced plans to sign a second contract for the procurement of the COVID-19 vaccine with Pfizer, totaling 100 million doses of vaccine, of which 35 million will be delivered in October.

This announcement was made directly by the Minister of Health of Brazil, Marcelo Queiroga, Monday 3 May. Thus, Brazil will have up to 200 million doses of vaccine by the end of the year, to overcome the shortage of vaccines that have caused the high number of infections and deaths of COVID-19 in the country.

Speaking to industry leaders in Sao Paulo, Queiroga said the second contract with Pfizer would double the 100 million doses already signed for the vaccine, which will be delivered by the end of September.

Queiroga blamed what he saw as a failure in the intensive care ward, for the large number of casualties caused by COVID-19 in Brazil, which has passed 407,000 confirmed deaths.

"We cannot accept, out of every 10 patients who are intubated, eight die. That is why we have had so many deaths, because health care is not providing the answers we expect from it," said Queiroga, Brazil's fourth Minister of Health during the COVID-19 pandemic. Reuters, Tuesday 4 May.

Meanwhile, the second largest city in Brazil, Rio de Janeiro last week was forced to announce a postponement of the delivery of the second dose of CoronaVac vaccine, due to out of stock of vaccines. The second dose will only be applied every other day until more supplies arrive from the finishing facility at the Butantan biomedical center in Sao Paulo.

Most of the COVID-19 shots given so far in Brazil are CoronaVac, which is produced in Butantan, Brazil. On April 19, the new material to produce 5 million doses of CoronaVac arrived in Brazil.

So far, Butantan has delivered 42 million doses of CoronaVac for the national immunization program, compared to 26.5 million doses of the AstraZeneca PLC vaccine, which is filled and completed by the biomedical center Fiocruz in Rio de Janeiro.