Butantan faces difficulties to speed up vaccine supply
In charge of the Butantan Institute, the largest producer of vaccines against Covid-19 in Brazil so far, physician Dimas Covas says deaths caused by the disease will reach 5,000 a day and sees with some skepticism the expectations of the Ministry of Health about the acquisition of jabs from several drugmakers until the end of the year. In an interview with Valor, Mr. Covas also points out that it is not realistic to expect a fast acceleration in the number of people inoculated in the next months. According to his calculations, until July the country will be able to immunize people older than 60, and maybe part of those who are in their 50s. In a telephone interview on Thursday, he said that a difficulty for the government continues to be to get more shots to Brazil quickly, because laboratories and raw material producers must honor commitments with other customers.
Read the main excerpts from the interview below.
Valor: Butantan increased the pace of production of Coronavac and reached in March about 950,000 doses per day. Will this rate increase?
Dimas Covas: No. This number in March doubled because we had a second production line available. We have two lines and we used both in March. That is why we delivered 22.3 million doses to the Ministry of Health.
Valor: How will it be in April?
Mr. Covas: As we must work produce the vaccine against influenza in April, we will use only one line. Besides, we are still waiting for more raw material from China. This month, we will deliver 10 million doses. Part still depends on the raw material expected to arrive next week [this week].
Valor: As for the raw material from China, the so-called API, what is the odds that the delivery of the next batches faces any obstacles?
Mr. Covas: It is not a problem of delivery. We finished the contract of 46 million doses with the Ministry of Health. The contract is from January 7th. These 46 million doses will be delivered now in April. The second contract [to supply the ministry with 54 million] was signed only in February. And once signed, the scheduling that we made with Sinovac was according to the availability of supplies. And by Sinovac's availability it was possible to deliver the 54 million doses until September. Then, we were able to advance the schedule and we will deliver by August. But this [the deadline for the production of the vaccines of the second contract] is due to the Health Ministry's delay in agreeing on the contract. The demand for the...
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