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Posted 3/4/2021 1:22 PM / Updated 3/4/2021 1:25 PM
(credit: Tony Winston / MS)
In order to fulfill the promise of increasing the vaccination rate against covid-19 by more than 1 million applications per day, the Minister of Health, Marcelo Queiroga, met this Saturday (04/03), with representatives of manufacturers and international health. authorities in order to speed up the production and import of doses, especially for the second quarter of 2021. The doctor even works with the possibility of using animal vaccine factories in the production of immunizers against the new coronavirus.
According to Queiroga, the possibility is still in the field of ideas. “There is no agreement. There are talks. A technical evaluation is still needed. This will not solve the problem in the short term. It will help Brazil and other countries in the medium term,” he said in an interview after the meeting.
Together with the director of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) in Brazil, Socorro Gross, the minister highlighted the efforts to expand imports of prepared vaccines as a short-term strategy, especially through the multilateral consortium Covax Facility.
“We discussed today, with the World Health Organization (WHO), through PAHO, the possibility of obtaining more vaccines in the next three months and, thus, bringing an acceleration to our vaccination program, one of the things that makes the health of our health system. Very good. We have more than 37 thousand vaccination rooms throughout the country and a vaccination capacity that is still inactive. For various reasons, but above all due to lack of vaccine, “he said.
In March, Covax made fewer doses available than estimated. 2.9 million units of the Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine were expected, but just over a million arrived. By April, Queiroga updated the offer of 30 million doses, through the initiatives of the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz) and the Butantan Institute. The minister stressed that he managed to reach the one million vaccinated mark in March, but considered that efforts were necessary to guarantee more doses to maintain the level throughout the month of April.
For this to happen, Queiroga once again emphasized that states and municipalities no longer need to reserve doses to guarantee the second application. The ministry gave the orientation to use that second, now that we have the concrete possibility of availability every month ”.
