Health crisis in Brazil

On January 17, weeks after other countries in Latin America and around the world began their mass inoculation campaigns, Brazil finally administered its first Covid-19 jab in the state of Sao Paulo using the CoronaVac vaccine developed by the Chinese biopharmaceutical company Sinovac. That first jab was one of the 6 million doses imported by the state-funded Butantan Institute in Sao Paulo, which helped develop the vaccine.

A few days later on January 23, the federally funded Fiocruz Institute announced that it received two million ready-to-use doses of Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccines from India and started distributing them across the country. Since then, over one million Brazilians have been vaccinated against the deadly virus.

Nevertheless, Brazil’s national Covid-19 vaccination programme is still in its infancy and it is not clear whether the country will be able to produce or import enough vaccine doses to immunise its entire population of 210 million before the end of the year.

Brazil, of course, is not the only country in the world struggling to vaccinate its population against the deadly virus in a timely manner. Lack of resources and infrastructure, coupled with rich countries hoarding more doses than they need, left many developing nations unable to obtain enough doses to vaccinate even the most vulnerable members of their societies.

There is one thing, however, that differentiates Brazil from all the other nations that appear to be losing the vaccine race: A far-right government refusing to acknowledge the severity of the crisis and determined to hinder any effort to stem the spread of the virus.

Indeed, since the beginning of the pandemic in early 2020, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and his government have done everything they can to prevent Brazil from responding to this unprecedented public health emergency efficiently.

Bolsonaro not only claimed that Covid-19 is just “a little flu” but also actively encouraged his supporters not to wear masks or practice physical distancing. He attended crowded events, shook hands and hugged people at the height of the first wave, and repeatedly ignored the scientific consensus on the best ways to defeat the virus. He pushed for anti-malaria drug Hydroxychloroquine and anti-parasitic Ivermectin to be used in the treatment of Covid-19, despite scientists around the world warning that there was no proof that either drug is effective against the disease. He sacked two health ministers in a matter of months because they refused to support the use of unproven treatments and tried to introduce simple physical distancing measures.

Beyond his efforts to downplay the severity of the crisis and spread misinformation about treatment methods, the president’s isolationist foreign policy and combative attitude towards China also hindered Brazil’s efforts to secure Covid-19 vaccines.

Excerpted: ‘Brazil’s COVID-19 catastrophe: nothing less than criminal’

Aljazeera.com