Brazil surpasses US in full vaccination rate against Covid

Brazil surpassed the United States in the percentage of vaccinated against Covid-19. This is shown by the portal Our World in Data, linked to the University of Oxford, in England.

The information was shared on a social network by scientist Eric Topol, cardiologist, founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, and professor of Molecular Medicine at the Scripps Research Institute.

According to Topol, Brazil joined 55 other countries that surpassed the American indexes. He has been reporting data about Covid-19 on his Twitter account.

According to the Our World in Data platform, on November 14th, 59.8% of Brazilians already had the complete vaccination schedule against Covid-19. While in the US, on the same date, the index reached 57.6%.

According to information from the consortium of press vehicles, on November 14, Brazil reached 125.4 million people vaccinated with two doses, out of a total of 213.3 million — a number that the IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography) and Statistics) projects for the current Brazilian population.

Thus, 58.8% of the country’s population are completely immunized against Covid. The percentages of the Press Consortium and Our World in Data differ slightly in that they use different databases with different updates.

Brazil’s immunization percentage is similar to that computed by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (compare the graph below). The agency records the complete vaccination of about 195.3 million Americans.

On the English platform it is possible to compare data from several countries. In the tool, it is possible to note, for example, that Chile surpassed the US in early June in the proportion of people who completed the vaccination schedule against Covid.

On the 4th of that month, the South American country marked 43.9% of the population vaccinated with the two doses, 0.2% ahead. On November 12, the last data released by Chile, it was at 81.8%.

Australia, on October 18th, passed the US by one percentage point and reached 69.3% on November 14th. The European Union, on Aug. 2, had reached 49.9% of those vaccinated against 49.8% of Americans and rose to 66.2% on Nov. 13, the last figure reported at the conclusion of the report.

The US government authorized the start of vaccination against the coronavirus for December 14 of last year, with the immunizing agent produced by the American Pfizer in partnership with the German BioNTech.

For Raquel Stucchi, an infectious disease specialist at Unicamp and consultant to the Brazilian Society of Infectology, the fact that Brazil has reached almost 60% of the population fully vaccinated is good news, but it should not be seen as a victory.

“It’s much more merit from the United States than from Brazil. Brazil should have surpassed the United States in mid-May, because we have a population that accepts vaccination a lot, thanks to the National Immunization Program in its campaigns”, he ponders.

“We just didn’t make any further progress due to some factors such as the difficulty in terms of vaccines and not having started vaccination earlier. Our projection, as infectologists and sanitarists, is that Brazil could have reached 80% of the population vaccinated in the first half of the year. .”

Marcia Castro, scientist, professor of demography at the Faculty of Public Health at Harvard, member of the Covid-19 BR Observatory and columnist for sheet, do not be surprised by the news.

She also points out that Brazil has a tradition in immunization campaigns and this is not a rule in the US.

“There are states with very low coverage — the United States is experiencing the unvaccinated pandemic — and there are cities that offer money trying to get people to get the vaccine. You reach the limit and you can’t get people vaccinated anymore. It was inevitable. for Brazil to surpass the US, because the strength of the anti-vaccination movement is much stronger”, he comments.

For her, Brazil now needs to expand coverage, guaranteeing the second dose to those who have not yet received it, as well as reinforcement for the elderly who took Coronavac at the beginning of the campaign.

“This euphoria of thinking it’s all over and removing the requirement for masks… You have to be careful, because there are still many unvaccinated people and the virus is still circulating”, says Castro.

In addition, Brazil needs to increase the testing strategy, says the professor.

“It would take much more antigen testing, which has a quick result for the population. People should have access to these tests quickly, directly via the SUS or at a low cost. Without a containment strategy, how to reduce circulation?”

Sanitary doctor Gonzalo Vecina Neto, professor of public health at USP, sees the Brazilian performance as a consequence of having a universal public health system here, the SUS.

“Americans were more agile in buying vaccines and less in using them. We bought fewer vaccines, we had smaller distribution, but we managed to apply more”, he summarizes.

Evaldo Stanislau de Araújo, an infectious disease specialist at USP’s Hospital das Clínicas, recalls that, in addition to the positive Brazilian mark in overcoming the US, attention must be paid to the duration of the immunity response.

The United States already has at least three states that have released the booster dose for any vaccinated person. In Brazil, the reinforcement has not yet been adopted along these lines.

“This issue of the immune response is important for these vaccines that we are using now. If Brazil does not plan properly for 2022 and the other years to come, we will certainly have problems again, also because circulation has increased a lot”, says Araújo .

“Today, Brazil is in a comfortable situation, but it needs to plan to maintain a good level of immunity”, he concludes.

As a result of immunization, four out of five cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants in Brazil had a reduction in new Covid-19 cases in October, the highest rate of the entire pandemic.

Data are from Covid’s acceleration monitor sheet, which measures the rate of growth of new coronavirus infections in large states and municipalities, which have more stable and reliable data than smaller ones.

On average, October had 260 cities per day in the deceleration stage, when the number of new cases is falling. This represents 80% of the 326 cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants.