Ships 3 Million Doses Of Johnson & Johnson's COVID-19 Vaccine To Brazil, USA: No Ties

Handling COVID-19 in Brazil. (Wikimedia Commons/Alice Mafra)

JAKARTA - The United States will ship 3 million doses of Johnson & Johnson's one-shot COVID-19 vaccine to Brazil this Thursday, June 24, a White House official said.

The shipment, part of Washington's pledge to donate 80 million vaccines, will be flown from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on an Azul Airlines flight late Thursday to Campinas, a city in southeastern Brazil about 100 km (62 miles) from Sao Paulo, the official said.

Brazil is currently battling the COVID-19 pandemic, with more than 500,000 people dying since the pandemic began a year ago.

As reported by Reuters, The White House said scientific teams and legal and regulatory authorities from both countries were working together to ensure a speedy delivery.

The single-use J&J vaccine is seen as very helpful in ensuring effective vaccination rates in remote areas, as it does not require a second dose.

"The vaccine aid has been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and will come from supplies that are immediately available in the United States", the official said.

"Brazil has given regulatory approval for the J&J vaccine, providing the quickest path to get a large number of doses into the country immediately", the official added.

Previously, the manufacturing of Johnson & Johnson's vaccine at Emergent BioSolutions Inc.'s Baltimore, Maryland plant was stopped by the FDA in April, following a manufacturing error that caused millions of doses of the COVID-19 vaccine to fail.

White House officials underlined that the doses sent to Brazil were safe and stressed that the aid came with no ties to President Jair Bolsonaro's administration.

"We are dispensing these doses not to secure aid or extract concessions. Our vaccines are unbound. We are doing this for the sole purpose of saving lives", the official said.

Launching Worldometers Thursday, June 24, Brazil recorded an additional 114,139 positive infection cases, bringing the total COVID-19 cases now to 18,170,778, placing Brazil in the third position in the world. However, the addition of 2,343 deaths, the largest in the world yesterday, made Brazil record 507,240 deaths from COVID-19 or second in the world.