The first doses of Pfizer’s bivalent vaccine arrived this Friday (9) in Brazil. In total, there were 1.4 million doses of the immunizer. The pharmaceutical still expects that on Sunday (11) and on Monday (12) other batches will be delivered.
With that, Brazil should have 4.5 million doses by the beginning of next week.
The immunizer model is the one that uses the original strains of Sars-CoV-2 and the BA.1 omicron variant. Another 4.4 million doses are expected by December 19th.
Pfizer has also developed another vaccine with omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5. In this case, the pharmaceutical company plans to deliver 27.4 million doses of this drug model to Brazil.
That way, the country would have access to 36.3 million doses of the two updated vaccines over two months.
On the 22nd of last month, the vaccines received emergency approval from Anvisa (National Health Surveillance Agency) to be used in children over 12 years old.
The Ministry of Health had a meeting with the CTAI (Technical Advisory Chamber on Immunizations) on November 30 to seek a recommendation on how to use the new immunizers. Chamber specialists indicated that vaccines be used as a booster dose only in higher risk groups, such as the elderly, immunosuppressed and pregnant women.
For other audiences, such as young people without comorbidities, there is a lack of evidence on the advantages that a new booster would bring in avoiding the severity of the disease.
The indications given by the CTAI come at a time when the ministry is planning what to do with the new vaccines. The folder, however, has not yet defined how the doses will be used.
“Guidelines on the distribution, application of vaccines and the target audience will be published by the Ministry of Health in a technical note in the coming days,” the folder said.
Similarly, this is the recommendation given to the health coordination of the transition of the elected government Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT).
Arthur Chioro, former Minister of Health and member of the coordination, told the Sheet that an important focus in the transition is to regulate the vaccination scheme already recommended for the population —for the time being, the possibility of a fifth dose for non-priority groups is not discussed.
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