Brazil receives material to prepare one million doses of Chinese vaccine

A total of 600 litres of supplies that will be used to prepare one million doses of Coronavac, the vaccine created by the Chinese Sinovac laboratory, arrived this Thursday in the Brazilian city of Sao Paulo, whose clinical trials are nearing completion.

The batch is in addition to the 120,000 ready doses received a fortnight ago. A total of 46 million doses have been purchased by the Government of Sao Paulo to cover the entire population of that region - the most affected by the pandemic - and will arrive in the next two weeks.

The Chinese vaccine, whose production and application will be coordinated by the Butantan Institute, Brazil's main immunological reference centre, landed early this morning at Guarulhos International Airport, located in the city of Sao Paulo, from a plane that took off from Beijing and made a stopover in Zurich, Switzerland.

"We came here to receive another batch of the Coronavac vaccine, the Butantan vaccine, the vaccine that will save the lives of millions of Brazilians," said the governor of Sao Paulo, Joao Doria, after the arrival of the supplies.

The raw material to be used in the preparation of the Chinese vaccine was packed in three bags of 200 litres each and put in refrigeration at temperatures of 2 to 8 degrees Celsius.

During the production process, which will take place continuously, the inputs will be packed by Butantan in multi-dose bottles, a procedure that should take between four and seven days and will directly involve about 40 employees of the Institute.

"We are completing another critical step in making the vaccine available in record time to Brazilians. Butantan's technology and experience allow us to carry out part of the production process in our own factory, and we are working to be able to produce the vaccine in its entirety very soon," said Butantan Institute director Dimas Covas, who also received the batch at Guarulhos airport.

Before starting production at the Institute, the Coronavac inputs will undergo tests that will evaluate and validate the quality of the product and the production process.

The Chinese vaccine will only be available to the Brazilian population when its effectiveness is verified, which should occur after the conclusion of the third phase of clinical studies and subsequent approval and registration by the National Health Surveillance Agency (Anvisa, regulator).

The immunizer is in the final stage of human clinical trials in Brazil and should have the effectiveness results announced in the first half of December.

Currently 74 volunteers infected with the coronavirus are being tested, more than the required number (61), for the opening of studies and analyses.