Mônica Bergamo: Bolsonaro government to donate 30 million vaccines against Covid to other countries

The Jair Bolsonaro government will donate 30 million doses of vaccines against Covid-19 to the Covax Facility, a consortium created to distribute immunizers to low- and middle-income countries. The announcement must be made on Monday (20).

The donation is the result of a commitment made by the federal government in October this year, after the G20 Summit. The countries that signed the destination pledged to show solidarity with the poorest countries, where vaccination has not advanced enough.

According to Health estimates, the donation should not affect the distribution of vaccines among Brazilians — the country will receive 770 million doses by the end of 2022, if calculated since the first application of the immunizing agent in the national territory. The government still believes that the immunization campaign can already be considered successful.

Rivaling with countries willing to pay high prices for the drugs, the Covax Facility delivered just 738 million doses to 144 countries or territories, below the 2 billion target established for 2021.

Today, half of the world’s population has received at least one dose of the vaccine. But, while rich and emerging countries already apply booster doses, poorer nations register low immunization rates.

Inequality is one of the main problems of the campaign, also affected by controversies about side effects, which are rare, and by protests against mandatory vaccination in some countries.

In addition to the moral and humanitarian issues involved in unequal access to vaccination, it has the potential to delay the end of the pandemic in the world, with the risk of new, more resistant variants emerging. This occurs since the virus circulates more among non-immunized individuals.

The concentration of doses in rich countries came to be called “vaccination apartheid” and “moral failure” by the director general of WHO, Tedros Adhanom.