Brazil's Covid Shot Campaign Gets Off To Chaotic Start

Rio de Janeiro, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 16th Feb, 2021 ) :In hard-hit Brazil, hope unleashed by the first Covid-19 shots is giving way to frustration that the government's vaccination campaign is beset by the same chaos that has marked its pandemic response.

One month after the first dose was administered to a Sao Paulo nurse on January 17 -- setting off a flurry of optimism in the country with the world's second-highest death toll -- Brazil has managed to give shots to about 5.3 million people.

That number accounts for 2.5 percent of the nation's population of 212 million.

Shortages have forced several key areas to halt immunization, including Rio de Janeiro which announced Monday it had to suspend the campaign in the city of 6.7 million until more doses arrived.

"The government made the mistake of putting all its eggs in one basket," said Ethel Maciel, an epidemiologist at the Federal University of Espirito Santo.

Under President Jair Bolsonaro, a far-right social-distancing skeptic who routinely flouts expert advice on containing the new coronavirus, Brazil managed to secure just six million doses for the start of its vaccination campaign.

During the worldwide race last year to gain access to the most promising test vaccines, Bolsonaro bet big on the one developed by British-Swedish pharmaceutical firm AstraZeneca in partnership with Oxford University.

One of the president's top opponents, Sao Paulo Governor Joao Doria, meanwhile struck a deal for his state to purchase and help produce another vaccine, CoronaVac, developed by Chinese firm Sinovac.

That was the vaccine that ultimately got injected into the first Brazilian arm, and it has saved Brazil from having even fewer doses on hand.

"It's a good thing (Sao Paulo) made that deal, because otherwise all we'd have today would be two million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, for a population of more than 200 million," Maciel told AFP.

Meanwhile, Bolsonaro "spearheaded an anti-vaccination campaign, saying he wouldn't get vaccinated and warning people it could turn them into alligators," added Maciel, who has submitted a petition for Congress to impeach the president over what she calls his "criminal" handling of Covid-19.

The Sinovac and AstraZeneca vaccines are the only two that Brazilian regulators have approved so far.