Brazil reaches 60% of the population with a full cycle of the Covid vaccine

Brazil arrived this Friday (19) to 60.12% of the population with the primary scheme of the complete Covid vaccine, that is, people who received two doses or a single dose immunizing agent. Despite the encouraging number, international experience shows that precautions to avoid the coronavirus still need to remain, experts point out.

The 60% were reached with the records, this Friday, of 823,821 second doses and 4,845 single doses. In addition, Brazil also computed 171,208 first doses and 402,056 booster doses.

With the new data, 157,646,149 people received at least the first dose of a vaccine against Covid in Brazil —123,699,538 of them have already received the second dose of the immunizing agent. Added to the single doses of Janssen’s vaccine against Covid, there are now 128,251,431 people with two doses or one dose of Janssen’s vaccine.​

Thus, the country already has 73.90% of the population with the 1st dose. Considering only the adult population, the values ​​for the first dose and second dose are, respectively, 97.26% and 79.12%.

The data are from the consortium of press vehicles, collaboration between sheet, UOL, O Estado de S. Paulo, Extra, O Globo and G1 to gather and publish the numbers related to the pandemic of the new coronavirus.

The number can be considered high in relation to the reality of other countries, taking into account the size of the Brazilian population and the fact that we started vaccination after places like the United Kingdom and the United States.

The US has even been left behind by Brazil in relation to the percentage of the population fully vaccinated. According to data from the CDC (Center for Disease Control), the US has 58.9% of those vaccinated with either the two doses or the single dose vaccine.

The North American country started its campaign on December 14, 2020. Brazil, in turn, started on January 17, 2021.

Considering only South America, Brazil is behind Chile and Uruguay, respectively with around 82% and 75% of the population with a complete primary scheme, according to data from the platform Our World in Data, linked to the University of Oxford. Chile started vaccination on December 24th, while Uruguay only started on March 1st.

Despite the advance of vaccination in Brazil and the rates of cases and deaths at lower levels, compared to the very high levels of past months, the excitement should be contained, warn scientists.

Even countries with higher vaccination levels than Brazil have recently returned to face a new increase in contamination.

Germany, for example, has been setting records in a fourth wave of the disease and is seeing hospital occupancy increase. The country has 67% of the population with a complete primary vaccination schedule and 70% with at least one dose.

Austria, with almost 64% of people with a complete primary scheme, is another country where the critical situation of new infections has led to the announcement of a new lockdown.

“Sixty percent do not give any assurance that the pandemic is under control”, assesses Raquel Stucchi, a professor at Unicamp and a consultant at the SBI (Brazilian Society of Infectology).

The infectologist says that it is also necessary to take into account that, between five and six months after the second dose, there is a reduction in protection, which should play down the percentage of immunized patients. Hence the importance of booster doses, which are already applied in various parts of the world, including Brazil.

According to Stucchi, the Ministry of Health made a wise decision to open the booster dose for the entire adult population that has already completed five months after the second application.

In addition, there are other particularities in the percentage achieved, which concern the total population of the country, warns Renato Kfouri, pediatrician and director of SBIm (Brazilian Society of Immunizations).

The Covid vaccine is not authorized in Brazil for people under 12 years of age. Thus, taking into account the entire Brazilian population can generate a certain amount of noise in the observed numbers. Considering only people over 12 years of age, the percentage with a complete primary cycle of vaccination reaches 71%.

In other countries, however, the Covid vaccine is already used in children. In the US, the vaccination of children aged 5 to 11 years, with the immunizing agent from Pfizer, has already taken place since the beginning of November.

In Brazil, Anvisa (National Health Surveillance Agency) received, at the end of last week, the request from Pfizer for the use of the vaccine against Covid in children, in the same age group.

The Butantan Institute, responsible for the production of Coronavac in Brazil, had also requested authorization for the use of the vaccine in children and adolescents aged 3 to 17 years. Anvisa, however, denied the request because, according to the agency, the study presented had only 586 participants and did not present information on age subgroups.

Since the initial denial by Anvisa to Butantan, on August 18, the process has been stuck, without the submission of a new application for use by the São Paulo institute.

Regarding the ideal amount of doses and time intervals, Kfouri says that we are still learning which is the best vaccination schedule for each immunizing agent and, thus, the recommendations may change throughout the process.

The specialist exemplifies that even age can end up impacting the best scheme, considering that in the elderly there is the possibility that protection lasts for a shorter period. “It is still too early to talk about the primary scheme for each vaccine and for each age”, he says.

Finally, the platform for developing vaccines (eg, messenger RNA, such as Pfizer’s, or inactivated virus, such as Coronavac) also influences the schedules, notes Kfouri.

Recently, pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca sent Anvisa a request to include a third dose of Covishield in the package insert for the immunizing agent. Pfizer has also publicly presented data on the application of an extra dose of its vaccine.

Also last week, the Ministry of Health said that Janssen’s vaccine, previously considered a single dose, must now have two doses and, like other immunizing agents approved in the country, have a booster dose after five months. The decision took ANVISA and the pharmaceutical responsible for the vaccine by surprise.

deaths

Brazil also registered 234 deaths from Covid and 11,910 cases of the disease, this Friday. With that, the country reached 612,411 lives lost and 22,001,369 people infected by Sars-CoV-2 since the beginning of the pandemic.

Moving averages, on the other hand, are stable, that is, without changes above 15%, compared to two weeks ago. The average death rate is now 211 per day and the average infection rate is 8,631.