Brazil approves emergency use of vaccines against COVID-19

On Sunday (Jan. 17), Brazil’s national sanitary regulator Anvisa recommended the emergency use of vaccines CoronaVac, of the Butantan Institute, in partnership with Chinese pharmaceutical company Sinovac; and AstraZeneca, of the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz), in collaboration with the Astrazeneca/Oxford consortium. The meeting lasted about five hours.

In the case of CoronaVac, the success rate in the prevention of the disease compared to the group that received the placebo is reported to have reached 50.39 percent. For AstraZeneca, Anvisa confirmed its global efficacy at 70.42 percent.

The decision for the emergency use of the two vaccines was made unanimously. All five Anvisa directors voted in favor of Director Meiruze Freitas’s report. She noted there is no therapeutic alternative to the vaccines, and that she based her decision on science and the arduous work of Anvisa technicians in the last few days.

“Guided by science and the data, the team concluded that the known and potential benefits of the these vaccines surpass their risks. [Anvisa] officials have worked wholeheartedly and with a sense of utter urgency,” Meiruze said  while reading her vote out loud.