The Presidents of the Brazilian Senate and House of Representatives said today that they have asked the Secretary-General of the United Nations, António Guterres, to help improve the country’s access to vaccines against Covid-19.
Both the president of the Senate, Rodrigo Pacheco, and the leader of the House of Representatives, Arthur Lyra, reported on their social networks about the talks with Guterres, who explained to them the critical situation in Brazil, which has exceeded 350 thousand deaths and 13.4 people. One million cases of the new Corona virus, and hospitals are on the verge of collapse.
Pacheco said, “We have exposed the tragic situation in Brazil” and “we have strengthened the request for assistance from the United Nations so that the country becomes a priority for the Covax Association Union, so that there is anticipation in the delivery of vaccines.”
The Covax Facility Consortium is an initiative involving about 150 countries and aims to ensure a balanced distribution of vaccines, of which Brazil has maintained 42 million doses, but has not received any yet.
In addition, the Brazilian government, headed by Jair Bolsonaro, ensures that it has “contracted” another 500 million doses of immunization devices in several laboratories, enough to vaccinate the 212 million Brazilians expected to arrive in the country this year.
However, the immunization process is progressing very slowly in Brazil, and so far, according to official data, only 26 million people have been vaccinated, the vast majority of them with the first of the two necessary doses.
Most of the vaccines that Brazil hopes to have this year will be produced by the Botantan Institute, in São Paulo, and the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiucruz), in Rio de Janeiro, which has agreements to produce the antidote developed by the Chinese. Sinovac Laboratory and Peko AstraZeneca / Oxford University Consortium.
However, so far, the two institutes have been limited to mobilizing vaccines in the country, and will only be able to fully produce them as of the second half of this year.
Pacheco and Lyra’s conversation with Guterres came 20 days after the Brazilian Senate passed a motion asking the international community to help with vaccination against COVID-19 and warning that the South American country could be a “real” threat to the world. “
The request was directed to the United Nations, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), in addition to the G20 and the parliaments of the United States, the United Kingdom and China, and the vaccine – laboratory production.
The document clarified that this request occurs “when the horrific ghost of death looms over millions of Brazilians and when new forms of the Covid-19 virus become a global threat,” referring to the new strains spread in Brazil, including three times more contagious and in Amazonas (p. 1) ).
The Covid-19 pandemic has killed at least 2,937,355 people around the world, resulting in more than 135.9 million cases, according to a report issued by Agence France-Presse.
