Covid vaccines arrive in Brazil after lack of stock and postponed campaign

The first batch of updated Covid vaccines arrived at Guarulhos International Airport, in São Paulo, this Thursday morning (2). The vaccines are from Moderna and were acquired after competition with Pfizer.

When contacted, the Ministry of Health stated that it will release the vaccination campaign strategy soon.

According to Moderna, there will be around 40 flights throughout the month to bring the 12.5 million doses acquired by the Ministry of Health. Today, 1.25 million arrived in the country.

The vaccine has technology to protect against the XBB.1.5 sublineage of the coronavirus, which has the fastest replication to date, according to the WHO (World Health Organization).

The first dispute between companies over a vaccine contract delayed the national vaccination campaign against Covid, planned to take place in April.

The Secretary of Health Surveillance, Ethel Maciel, said in a previous interview with the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo that the registration of the Moderna vaccine hampered the purchase, since before there was no competition – until then only Pfizer held the registrations for the vaccine. model that Health was looking for.
In December 2023, Anvisa (National Health Surveillance Agency) approved the use of the Pfizer vaccine for the XBB variant in Brazil. In March, it granted the same approval for the Moderna vaccine.

According to her, the ministry began preparing an emergency purchase of vaccines at the beginning of 2024. The companies’ proposals were delivered at the beginning of March.

In February, Maciel wrote on X (formerly Twitter) that the vaccine adapted to the XBB variant would arrive in Brazil the following month. In March, Minister Nísia Trindade promised to start vaccinating priority groups in April.
The vaccine, however, was only purchased on April 19th and the plan became to open vaccination for priority groups this month of May.

Without new transfers of doses from Health, the municipality of Rio de Janeiro warned the population that there are no vaccines available for people over 12 years of age. The governments of Rio Grande do Sul and Maranhão also stated that they are out of vaccines for this public to deliver to the municipalities.

Ethel had confirmed that the ministry no longer had doses of the bivalent vaccine, updated for Covid variants, in stock. (GEOVANA OLIVEIRA/FOLHAPRESS)

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