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Brazil scrambles for India-made Covid vaccines to jumpstart inoculations Brazil made a diplomatic push to guarantee an Indian-made shipment of British drugmaker AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine, hoping to avoid export restrictions that could delay immunisations
BRASILIA/RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) – Brazil made a diplomatic push on Monday to guarantee an Indian-made shipment of British drugmaker AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine, hoping to avoid export restrictions that could delay immunizations during the world’s second-deadliest outbreak. In parallel, Brazil’s private clinics struck a preliminary deal for an alternative injection made by India’s Bharat Biotech despite a lack of public results from late-stage trials. The scramble by Brazil’s government and private sector underscored how Latin America’s
largest nation, once an example of mass immunization success in the developing world, has fallen behind peers in the race to inoculate against the coronavirus. Plans by Brazil’s Fiocruz Institute to import AstraZeneca’s vaccine in bulk, filling and finishing doses locally, would only have 1 million doses ready by the second week of February, the head of the government-funded biomedical center told Reuters last week. Amid rising criticism of its slow response and a death toll approaching 200,000, second only to the United States, Brazil is now rushing to import finished doses, playing catch up to neighboring Chile and Argentina where inoculations are underway. However, the chief executive of the Serum Institute of India told Reuters on Sunday that he expected India’s government to restrict export of COVID-19 vaccines.