Anvisa’s board of directors conditionally approved the use of Sputnik V with four yeses and one vote against, and also conditionally approved the use of the Covaxin vaccine developed by Indian pharmaceutical company Bharat Biotech after four hours of discussion on the Youtube video-sharing portal.
The authority only allowed the use of the Russian vaccine in healthy adults, it should not be given to people with chronic diseases or pregnant women. Only vaccines manufactured by companies that have been previously tested by the competent Brazilian authorities may be imported. Six Brazilian states have import licenses and can obtain enough Sputnik V vaccines to immunize one percent of the population.
Kirill Dmitriev, head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RFPI), which is responsible for managing Russian vaccines, indicated on Twitter that the vaccine would arrive in Latin America in July. He added that Brazil is the 67th country in the world in which Sputnik V has been licensed, and in terms of the number of licensed countries, this vaccine is the second in the world.
At the end of April, Anvisa was still unanimously refusing to import and use Sputnik V, despite requests from Brazilian rulers, citing a lack of data on the safety, quality and efficacy of vaccination. The authority stated that within the vaccine batch that was received for testing, the second dose that would be given was able to reproduce the adenovirus that carries genetic information, allowing it to multiply when it enters the body and cause a cold.
After Anvisa admitted that it had not even tested the vaccine, the Russian vaccine developers threatened to sue him for deliberately spreading false and inaccurate information.
The Brazilian Health Authority accused him of bowing under pressure from the United States. The Russian side finally sent the documents to Anvisa in mid-May with the missing data.
Referring to a study of 38 million vaccines at the time, the Gamaleja Institute and the RFPI reported that Sputnik V was 97.6% effective against COVID-19. Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore estimates that approximately 211 million people in Brazil started the epidemic. 16.8 million people have been infected with the coronavirus since then. The country ranks third in the world after the United States and India in terms of the number of infected people. Only the United States has the number of deaths from the virus: so far, more than 470,000 have died due to complications from the disease, Covid-19, caused by the virus. In Brazil, 47.6 million people – 22.6 percent of the population – have so far received the first dose of the vaccine and 22.7 million (10.8 percent) the second.
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