President of Pfizer Latin Americal, Carlos Murillo attends a meeting of the Parliamentary Inquiry Committee to investigate government actions and management during the coronavirus disease pandemic, at the Federal Senate in Brasilia, Brazil May 13, 2021.
A Senate commission is investigating whether President Jair Bolsonaro's government mishandled the pandemic by failing to secure vaccines in time to curb a surge that has killed more than 420,000 Brazilians - the worst COVID-19 death toll outside the United States.Pfizer executive Carlos Murillo said that on Sep 12 the company's CEO sent a letter to Bolsonaro and others in his cabinet, including then health minister Eduardo Pazuello, expressing interest in providing Brazil with vaccines.
Production issues and bottlenecks in China have slowed local output of those vaccines. Just 11per cent of Brazilian adults have been fully vaccinated.The government did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the lack of response to Pfizer's vaccine offer. The Brazilian government eventually negotiated with Pfizer for 100 million doses in a contract signed in March, with the first 1 million doses arriving in late April.
Another lot of 628,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine landed in Brazil from Belgium on Wednesday, the Health Ministry said, adding that it has so far distributed 1.6 million doses of the shot in the national immunization program.Murillo said Pfizer is about to sign a contract for 100 million more doses for delivery to Brazil in the fourth quarter.
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