Anvisa must approve this Wednesday (19) the use of Covid self-test

The collegiate board of Anvisa (National Health Surveillance Agency) must approve this Wednesday (19) the use of the Covid-19 self-test in Brazil.

The Ministry of Health asked last Thursday (13) for the agency to release the exam that can be done at home. Used for months in other countries, self-tests are banned in the country because of a 2015 Anvisa resolution.

By rule, the ministry must propose a public policy to release the delivery of exams to the lay public. The Minister of Health, Marcelo Queiroga, has already signaled that the products should not be purchased by the federal government.

Agency technicians were also trying to bring to the same meeting the vote on the request to use Coronavac for the public from 3 to 17 years old. But the board’s analysis should be done at another date, later this week, as some opinions on the vaccine are being finalized.

The tendency is to approve the self-test and the use of Coronavac in children and adolescents, but the final decision depends on the vote of the majority of Anvisa’s five directors.

Testing in Brazil is focused on clinics, pharmacies and public services, which are unable to meet the demand due to the circulation of the Ômicron variant.

Scientific bodies last week called for a broader testing policy from the federal government and the permission to test at home. The demand for tests soared with the advance of contamination at the turn of the year.

Minister Queiroga said that the self-test can relieve health units, but said that the purchase of the product for the SUS may not have the desired effect.

“Brazil is a very heterogeneous country, with many contrasts. The allocation of this resource for acquiring self-tests, distributing them to the general population, may not have resulted in the public policy that we expect”, said the minister on the 14th.

Executive President of CBDL (Brazilian Chamber of Laboratory Diagnosis), Carlos Gouvêa told leaf that self-tests should be cheaper than over-the-counter antigen tests. “Today we see values ​​from R$ 70 to R$ 150 (of antigen tests) in pharmacies. The self-test should be from R$ 45 to R$ 70”, says Gouvêa.

In the proposal sent to Anvisa, the ministry advises that patients who have detected the infection by self-test seek care at a health unit or teleservice to confirm the diagnosis and receive guidance.

According to the same note, self-testing is an additional strategy to prevent and interrupt the chain of transmission of Covid-19, along with vaccination, the use of masks and social distancing.

Vaccine

The children’s vaccination campaign was opened last Friday (14), with the Pfizer immunizing agent for the group from 5 to 11 years old. The first immunized was Davi Seremramiwe Xavante, an 8-year-old indigenous boy.

Anvisa members say that some conditions can be defined to approve Coronavac for the group from 3 to 17 years old. Among them, that the São Paulo laboratory undertakes to generate data on the use of doses in Brazil, in addition to presenting the outcome of a global study being conducted in China, South Africa, Chile, Malaysia and the Philippines.

The opinions of the technical areas should point out that the vaccine demonstrates solid safety data. In addition, it should be noted that the immunizing agent is widely applied to younger people in other countries, such as Chile. The Andean country has already immunized 1.4 million people between the ages of 3 and 17.

The Ministry of Health evaluates using Coronavac in children, if there is approval from Anvisa. As the vaccine is of the same model applied to adults, states are already planning to allocate stocked doses to the younger public.

The advantage of Coronavac is the availability of doses, due to the fact that the immunizer has stopped being used by the federal government.

The vaccination of children and adolescents is a sensitive topic in the Jair Bolsonaro (PL) government, as the president distorts data and discourages the immunization of young people. He even threatened to expose the names of Anvisa servers who approved the use of Pfizer vaccines in children.

In a note released on the 8th, the president of Anvisa, Antonio Barra Torres, rebutted insinuations of alleged hidden interests of Anvisa in the vaccination of children and demanded the president’s retraction.