Vaccine “is not scientifically proven,” says Bolsonaro, contrary to what he told Anvisa and the evidence obtained by scientists | Politics

President Jair Bolsonaro’s statement is not true. CoronaVac efficacy and safety have been tested in clinical trials conducted in Brazil. In the country, the vaccine is manufactured by the Butantan Institute, in São Paulo, a public research institution linked to the state government.

Bolsonaro delivered the statement to journalists at the door of the Palácio da Alvorada. He reiterated, as he has done in recent weeks, that vaccination will not be mandatory.

“I cannot force anyone to get a vaccine, as a governor said a while ago that he was going to force. I am not inconsequential at this point. She has to be a volunteer, after all, there is nothing scientifically proven with this vaccine there.” said the president.

“People said that I was against the vaccine. I was against the vaccine without going through Anvisa. It went through Anvisa, I have nothing more to discuss, I have to distribute the vaccine,” Bolsonaro added.

Anvisa approved both the emergency use of CoronaVac and the vaccine from the University of Oxford and pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca by a unanimous vote of the board.

On this occasion, Director Meiruze Freitas, rapporteur for the emergency use request, stated that both vaccines met “quality and safety criteria for emergency use.”

Both vaccines are safe and have the ability to elicit a response from the defense system. The studies were published in the scientific journal “The Lancet”. See publications: Oxford vaccine and CoronaVac vaccine.

There were no serious adverse effects in any of the vaccines. The most frequent effects were pain at the injection site, fever and headache of mild or moderate intensity.

CoronaVac uses inactivated virus technology. This type of vaccine uses the entire virus to induce the response of the body’s defense system (but it does not cause disease, because, as the name says, it is inactive, that is, “dead”).

We have already used several inactivated virus vaccines against other diseases, such as hepatitis A, influenza, and rabies. There is also a polio vaccine that is injectable and is made from the inactivated virus.

“It is the virus inactivated with adjuvant, which enhances the immune response. It is a vaccine whose technology is very old, the side effects are well known. I think it will be a very important tool in this fight against Covid,” evaluated virologist Eduardo Flores, from the Federal University of Santa María (UFSM), in an interview with G1.

Experts heard by G1 They have already explained that CoronaVac is safe and will help stop the coronavirus pandemic.

“We also had no serious adverse reactions. For us scientists, this brings very good confidence. It is a good vaccine, which has no adverse effect, which did not generate a serious effect, which did not lead to hospitalization ”, explained the immunologist and researcher from USP Gustavo Cabral.

Researcher Mellanie Fontes-Dutra, creator of Analysis Network Covid-19 and postdoctoral fellow in biochemistry at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, highlighted the need for a good vaccination campaign to end the pandemic.

“It is a good vaccine, which has been adequately tested and with the highest standard of clinical testing, in a study with a pre-published protocol,” he added.

The Oxford vaccine uses viral vector technology. In this type of vaccine, researchers use another, modified virus to introduce part of the genetic material of the Sars-CoV-2 coronavirus into the body and induce the response of the body’s defense system. No vaccine is capable of causing Covid-19 or altering our DNA.

The efficacy of a vaccine shows how it works under ideal conditions. If it is 50% effective, for example, it means that it has managed to reduce by 50% the number of disease cases that would have occurred if it had not been applied.

CoronaVac, for example, had an overall effectiveness of 50.38%. (Better understand this link). This percentage is above the minimum established by Anvisa for the approval of a vaccine, which was 50%.See the infographic below.

The Oxford vaccine, for its part, showed an average effectiveness of 70.4%. To arrive at this number, the scientists considered data from two clinical trials: In one, volunteers took half a dose of the vaccine followed by a full dose. In these tests, the effectiveness reached 90%. In the second clinical trial considered, volunteers took two full doses of the vaccine. In these tests, the vaccine was 62% effective.

At the beginning of 2021, the federal government had guaranteed only the purchase of doses of the Oxford vaccine, which will be produced in partnership with Fiocruz. The government is also part of a consortium coordinated by the World Health Organization (WHO), which plans to deliver doses of vaccines, which have yet to be defined.

Doses of the Oxford vaccine have not yet reached the country. With that, the federal government decided last week to buy doses of CoronaVac, a vaccine Bolsonaro had said in October that he would not buy. The purchased doses were distributed to states, which have already begun immunizing priority groups.