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The Ministry of Health announced today that Brazil had confirmed 961 new deaths from covid-19 in the last 24 hours. Since the beginning of the pandemic, the total number of deaths caused by the disease has reached 189,220.
From yesterday to today, 46,696 new positive tests for covid-19 have been confirmed throughout the country. The number of people infected with the new coronavirus has risen to 7,365,517 since the start of the pandemic.
According to the federal government, 6,405,356 people recovered from the disease, with another 770,941 being followed.
SP says CoronaVac is effective for requesting emergency use
The São Paulo government and the Butantan Institute announced today that the CoronaVac vaccine against covid-19, produced in association with the SinoVac laboratory, was safe and effective enough to request registration for emergency use. However, the percentage of this efficacy was not disclosed at the request of the Chinese laboratory. Anvisa (National Health Surveillance Agency) should only receive the data within 15 days, when it will analyze the information and decide whether to approve the use of the immunizer in national territory.
Dimas Covas, director of the Butantan Institute, said the delay in the release of phase 3 test results will not interfere with the vaccine’s approval period. The goal, he said, is for the data to be compared with research results in other countries, preventing the immunizer from having different announced efficacy rates.
Despite not disclosing the figures, the state health secretary, Jean Gorinchteyn, said that the vaccine achieved “the superiority of efficacy” required “by both Anvisa and the WHO.”
When asked if the lack of data reflects disappointment in the results, Gorinchteyn denied it, but said the goal was always for the effectiveness to exceed 50%. “If for us it was 51% it was already important, especially at a time when we are experiencing a health crisis,” he said.
Vehicles gather to obtain information
In response to the decision of the government of Jair Bolsonaro to restrict access to data on the covid-19 pandemic, the media Twitter, El Estado de S. Paulo, Folha de S.Paulo, O Globo, G1 and Extra formed a consortium to work collaboratively to seek the necessary information directly from the state health departments of the 27 units of the Federation.
The federal government, through the Ministry of Health, should be the natural source of these figures, but the attitudes of the authorities and the president himself during the pandemic cast doubt on the availability of the data and its veracity.
