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(Reuters) – The president of Pfizer in Brazil, Carlos Murillo, said today that he is in talks with the Brazilian government so that the company can launch the Covid-19 vaccine that the company is developing in the first quarter of next year.
“In the case of Brazil, we are still working hard with the Brazilian government to try to accelerate the availability in Brazil as soon as possible. I hope, like the government, that in the first quarter of next year we can have this vaccine available in Brazil ”, said the executive during the virtual participation in the symposium of the National Academy of Medicine on probable vaccination scenarios for covid-19.
Pfizer Inc’s vaccine led the race for an immunizer against the new coronavirus this week, after the company and its partner BioNTech announced that their candidate has been shown to be more than 90% effective, according to initial data from clinical trials in the internship. advanced.
The possible vaccine is currently in advanced stage clinical trials in Brazil with 3,100 volunteers in the states of São Paulo and Bahia, but so far there is no purchase agreement by the federal government or any state.
According to the Ministry of Health, all vaccines with advanced studies in the world are being analyzed for possible acquisition by the federal government, including that of the Pfizer laboratory.
If an agreement is reached, the doses would be imported from Pfizer factories in the United States and Europe, but then the company could enter into a partnership with a Brazilian institution that includes technology transfer, Murillo said.
“We are interested in talking so that this technology is present in the country,” said the executive, recalling that the company’s vaccine is based on messenger RNA technology, still unprecedented in the world. “A country like Brazil has to have access and participate in this new type of vaccines and platforms.”
On the need to store the vaccine at very low temperatures, at least -70 degrees Celsius, Murillo said that the company already offers, together with the vaccine, a form of storage for up to 15 days that uses only dry ice.
“It is not a simple issue, nor does it solve logistics, but it changes the thinking that a country would need, for each vaccination center, to have a freezer, it is not that,” he said.
The vaccine will have three different prices: one for rich countries, another for middle-income countries (such as Brazil) and a third value for underdeveloped countries, but the executive did not give more details.
So far, the Brazilian government has made its main bet in the field of vaccines for Covid-19 in the candidate developed by the University of Oxford in alliance with the AstraZeneca laboratory. On the other hand, the State of São Paulo has an agreement with the Chinese company Sinovac, for coronaVac.
