BRASILIA – The news that the National Sanitary Surveillance Agency (Anvisa) has authorized Fiocruz to import two million doses of the Oxford vaccine against Covid-19 does not mean that the immunization will take place in the coming days. On the contrary: there are a series of bureaucracies and procedures to follow that can promote the start of vaccination of Brazilians towards the end of January or the beginning of February.
What Anvisa authorized was only the importation. Fiocruz has not yet made a formal request for emergency use of the vaccine to the agency. With this request, followed by the documentation required by the laboratory, Anvisa has up to ten days to issue this authorization. Tomorrow, Fiocruz technicians will meet with the agency’s team to answer the last questions about the necessary documentation.
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The expectation is that Fiocruz will request emergency use on Wednesday. In this order, the laboratory must report how many doses will be applied and in which population. Under the rule, the agency has up to ten days to issue the authorization for use. However, agency technicians believe that this will be done in less than ten days, because the talks between the laboratory and Anvisa are already well advanced.
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Once the emergency use authorization has been issued, it is necessary to wait for the batch of vaccines purchased in India to arrive. When the supplies arrive at the airport, Anvisa must verify if they are in accordance with the specifications sent by Fiocruz before allowing the batch to enter the country. Only after completing this procedure can the government schedule the vaccination.
Private laboratories can also request the importation of vaccines, in the line that Fiocruz did. The procedure is the same. However, according to the legislation, Anvisa prioritizes the analysis of the processes of the state governments and the Ministry of Health, that is, vaccination in private clinics will be at the end of the line.
