(Adds details on doses, Sao Paulo governor comments)
By Jamie McGeever and Pedro Fonseca
BRASILIA/RIO DE JANEIRO, Jan 17 (Reuters) - Brazilian health
regulator Anvisa on Sunday approved emergency use of COVID-19
vaccines from China's Sinovac Biotech Ltd and Britain's
AstraZeneca, clearing the way for immunizations as the
pandemic enters a deadly second wave.
Minutes after Anvisa's board voted unanimously to approve
both vaccines, Monica Calazans, a 54-year-old nurse in Sao
Paulo, became the first person to be inoculated in the country,
receiving the Chinese vaccine known as CoronaVac.
President Jair Bolsonaro, a coronavirus skeptic who has
refused to take a vaccine himself, is under growing pressure to
start inoculations in Brazil, which has lost more than 200,000
to COVID-19 – the worst death toll outside the United States.
(Graphic: https://tmsnrt.rs/34pvUyi)
Delays with vaccine shipments and testing results have held
up vaccinations in the country, once a global leader in mass
immunizations and now a regional laggard after countries such as
Chile and Mexico started giving shots last month.
Bolsonaro's government aims to kick off a national
immunization program this week but is waiting on shipments of
the AstraZeneca vaccine at the center of its plans. That has
added to public frustration and offered a political rival the
chance to upstage the right-wing president.
Sao Paulo Governor Joao Doria, who oversees the Butantan
biomedical center that is partnered with Sinovac in Brazil, said
Anvisa's decision was a triumph for science as he gave the
go-ahead for the first vaccination in his state.
"A victory for science. A victory for life. A victory for
Brazil," Doria tweeted.
Bolsonaro, for whom Doria is a potential center-right rival
to his 2022 re-election efforts, has taunted the governor over
CoronaVac's disappointing 50% efficacy in Brazilian trials. But
the federal Health Ministry has agreed to acquire and distribute
the shot for the national immunization drive.
Health Minister Eduardo Pazuello told a news conference that
the rush to start vaccinating immediately was an illegal
"marketing ploy" and the government would start distributing the
vaccines to states on Monday, with the nationwide immunization
plan beginning on Wednesday.
Brazil could eventually vaccinate 1 million people a day, he
said.
Adding to the urgency for vaccinations, a second wave of the
outbreak in Brazil is snowballing as the country confronts a
new, potentially more contagious variant of the coronavirus that
originated in Amazonas state and prompted Britain and Italy to
bar entry to Brazilians.
Butantan, which is set up to fill and finish CoronaVac doses
on its production line, plans to supply 46 million doses of the
two-dose shot by April, the institute said in a statement. Some
6 million of those are ready to go.
The federally funded Fiocruz institute is still waiting for
a delayed shipment of the active ingredient in the AstraZeneca
vaccine for finishing on a Rio de Janeiro assembly line.
The Health Ministry has scrambled to line up 2 million ready
doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine from India, but officials there
have suggested it may take weeks to approve exports. Pazuello
said on Sunday he expected the doses from India this week.
(Reporting by Eduardo Simoes in Sao Paulo, Pedro Fonseca in Rio
de Janeiro, Jamie McGeever and Ricardo Brito in Brasilia;
Editing by Brad Haynes, Lisa Shumaker and Peter Cooney)
Astrazeneca (AZN)