MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Over 53% of Brazilians fully vaccinated, report says

São Paulo is the state with the highest percentage of people fully vaccinated (66.8%)

Brazil's much-criticized anti-COVID-19 vaccination drive has already reached 53% of the population with full treatment, while 72% of patients have at least taken the initial dose, according to a health report released Wednesday.

All doses combined, a total of 274,767,554 injections have been applied so far, the report released by a media consortium also showed. These figures also include 7,459,199 booster doses.

São Paulo is the state with the highest percentage of people fully vaccinated (66.8%), Mato Grosso do Sul (63.76%), the Rio Grande do Sul (59.38%), Santa Catarina (57.04%) and Paraná (56.94%), whereas people have taken at least one dose at São Paulo (80.40%), Santa Catarina (75.61%), Rio Grande do Sul (74.96%), Minas Gerais (74.09) and Paraná ( 73.95%).

The survey is the result of a partnership between the press media consortium, formed by G1, O Globo, Extra, O Estado de S.Paulo, Folha de S.Paulo and UOL. Vaccination data started to be monitored as of January 21st. Population estimates are from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE).

The consortium was formed in June 2020, in response to a decision by President Jair Bolsonaro to, at the time, restrict access to data on the pandemic. The bulletins currently report the number of people who have died of coronaviruses, the number of infected people and the moving average, an index that allows verifying in which states the pandemic is increasing, decreasing or stable.

Meanwhile, aircraft carrying new batches of Pfizer vaccines have landed Wednesday at Viracopos airport carrying over 3.6 million doses. With the new deliveries, the pharmaceutical company has reached 18.6 million of the 100 million doses agreed upon in a second contract with the federal government, and which must be delivered by December 31. Delivery of the first 100 million doses from the first agreement has been completed Oct. 5, it was reported.

The vaccines sent to Brazil were produced in two factories in the United States -Kalamazoo and McPherson- plus one plant in Puurs, Belgium.

The Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine was the first to obtain definitive sanitary registration by the National Health Surveillance Agency (Anvisa), in February this year and is suitable for people over 12 years of age, in two doses, with an interval of 21 days between them. It is the only antiCOVID-19 drug that can be applied to children under 18 in Brazil.

Anvisa had initially allowed it for use on people from 16 years of age, but then the decision was changed to 18 years.

Nevertheless, after an external advisory committee of the FDA, the regulatory agency of the United States, recommended Tuesday that Pfizer's ComiRNAty drug be applied to children aged 5 to 11 years old, the laboratory has announced Wednesday it would seek a similar clearance from Anvisa next month.

If approved by the FDA, the forecast is that the vaccine can be applied to American children from next week, with a dosage of one-third of that applied to adults, it was reported.