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RIO DE JANEIRO: President Jair Bolsonaro faced harsh criticism on Sunday (December 13) for his government’s plan, or lack of it, opponents said, to vaccinate the population against COVID-19 in Brazil, the country. with the second highest death toll worldwide.
Brazil published its vaccination plan on Saturday with notable gaps, including a start date and details of how to reach its target of 70 percent of the population.
That sparked a new round of criticism against the far-right president, who has persistently defied advice from experts on how to contain the pandemic and recently declared that he did not plan to get vaccinated.
“Enough of the vaccine antics!” The main newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo said in a cover editorial.
“The murderous stupidity of President Jair Bolsonaro in the face of the coronavirus pandemic has exceeded all limits.”
Rival newspaper Estado de Sao Paulo condemned the government’s “lethal incompetence”.
“Faced with the worst health crisis of our era, the response of this government will be remembered as disastrous in every way … even its vaccination plan,” he said.
The plan, which the Supreme Court asked the government to present, provides an outline of the target populations and the vaccines to be used in Brazil’s initial immunization campaign.
It envisions four phases targeting sensitive groups, including health workers, the elderly, indigenous Brazilians, and teachers, for a total of 51.6 million people, or 24 percent of the population of 212 million.
The plan says the optimal goal is to vaccinate more than 70 percent of the population, but does not provide details on how to reach that number.
Experts said details about the timing, logistics and sources of the vaccines were also missing.
START DATE OF THE JUDGE’S ORDERS
Supreme Court Justice Ricardo Lewandowski ordered the government to set the start date for the vaccination campaign within 48 hours.
Meanwhile, a group of public health experts whose names appeared on the plan said in a statement that they had not been consulted on the final text.
“We never saw any version of this document,” said one, epidemiologist Ethel Maciel.
Brazil has the second highest number of coronavirus deaths in the world, after the United States. (Photo: AFP / Silvio Avila)
Other experts openly criticized the plan.
“The Ministry of Health is trying to make the Brazilian people and the Supreme Court look like clowns,” tweeted microbiologist Natalia Pasternak, a regular critic of the government’s response to COVID-19.
He noted that the plan contained 70 million doses of the vaccine from US pharmaceutical company Pfizer, although its purchase is still being negotiated, and did not provide information on how they would be stored at -70 degrees Celsius (-94 degrees Fahrenheit). required. .
‘NEW VACCINE REVOLT’
Even as the world’s long wait for a COVID-19 vaccine comes to the beginning of the end in Britain and elsewhere, the matter is locked in a messy political battle in Brazil.
Bolsonaro’s anti-vaccination stance contrasts with that of Sao Paulo Governor Joao Doria, one of the main contenders to challenge him for the presidency in 2022.
Doria is pushing to begin immunizing people on Jan.25 with the China-developed CoronaVac vaccine, which her state is helping to test and produce.
Bolsonaro openly opposes that plan, ridiculing CoronaVac as “Joao Doria’s Chinese vaccine.”
The federal vaccination plan does not include CoronaVac.
The dispute has evolved into what some commentators call a “new vaccine revolt,” referring to a deadly 1904 uprising against the smallpox vaccine in Rio de Janeiro.
Critics say Bolsonaro’s skeptical comments are dissuading many Brazilians from getting vaccinated.
Folha released a survey on Sunday that found that 22 percent of Brazilians do not plan to get vaccinated against COVID-19, up from 9 percent in August.
The Datafolha survey found that 50 percent of those surveyed said they would not take a vaccine made in China, compared with 47 percent who did.
It also found that Bolsonaro’s approval rating remained stable despite the pandemic, at 37 percent, the same as in August, and the best rating of his term.
Bolsonaro, who has downplayed the new coronavirus as a “little flu,” said Thursday that “we are at the end of the pandemic.”
Experts, however, say the country is going through a second wave.
After a drop of more than two months, Brazil’s curve for average weekly deaths from COVID-19 has risen sharply in recent weeks.
The total death toll in Brazil is now 181,123, second only to 297,886 in the United States.
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