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NEW DELHI: India and China are quite unwittingly on opposing sides of a heated political debate in Brazil, a battle royal between Covishield by the Serum Institute and Coronavac by China’s Sinovac.
Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, who does not have a healthy fear of Covid, did not focus too much on securing vaccines for his people, even though Brazil is, like India, one of the world’s top vaccine-producing countries.
However, things became serious when the governor of Sao Paulo, Joao Doria, Bolsonaro’s political opponent and a potential contender for the presidency in 2022 declared in December 2020, that he would vaccinate 44 million residents of his province with the Coronavac, developed by China’s Sinovac.
London has declared a "major incident," saying hospitals in the British capital could soon be overwhelmed. Elsewhere, Germany has registered a new record daily death toll. DW has the latest from around the world.
London has declared a "major incident," saying hospitals in the British capital could soon be overwhelmed. Elsewhere, Germany has registered a new record daily death toll. DW has the latest from around the world.
Brazil's government has signed a deal with Sao Paulo's Butantan Institute to buy the full output this year of a Chinese COVID-19 vaccine it is producing, the institute said, after announcing strong efficacy trial data.
The government is negotiating the purchase of 350 million doses of coronavirus vaccines for 2021.
The figure includes 210 million of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine that is largely made in Brazil by the Fiocruz institute, 70 million of Pfizer s vaccine, and another 42 million of the one produced by the international conglomerate Covaz.
However, none of those, nor the CoronaVac produced by Chinese laboratory Sinovac, which is being tested in Sao Paulo, have yet asked the regulatory agency Anvisa for emergency use authorization which they will need before they can start vaccinating. Bolsonaro has lost a lot of time with his denials, with his political battles with state governors over quarantine measures, with his campaign against the vaccine and it being mandatory, Jose David Urbaez, from the Brazilian Infectiology Society, told