MEXICO CITY (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 09th September, 2020) Brazil's acting Health Minister Eduardo Pazuello said mass vaccination of the population against the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) would begin in January 2021.
"We are signing contracts with vaccine manufacturers, it is expected that deliveries will begin in January; in January next year, we will begin mass vaccination," Pazuello said as quoted by the Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper.
The candidate vaccine in Brazil is from the AstraZeneca laboratory. A total of 100.4 million doses of the vaccine are expected to be initially supplied to the country.
In early September, the authorities of the Brazilian state of Parana, on the basis of a bilateral agreement with the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), announced that they would begin testing the Russian COVID-19 vaccine Sputnik-V in October on 10,000 volunteer medical workers. The agreement with the RDIF includes, in addition to the third phase of clinical trials, the production and distribution of the vaccine in Brazil.
The Russian Health Ministry earlier registered the world's first vaccine for the prevention of COVID-19, developed by the Gamaleya Center and produced jointly with the RDIF. RDIF CEO Kirill Dmitriev said the fund had received applications from over 20 countries for the purchase of a billion doses of the Russian coronavirus vaccine. He said Russia had agreed on the production of the vaccine in five countries.
