The city of Rio Bananal, in southeastern Brazil, missed all doses of the vaccine against covid-19 after a 9-year-old child turned off the power at the vaccination headquarters, the Civil Police said today.
According to the authorities, the boy was responsible for switching off the electricity clock at the Rio Bananal vaccination headquarters, in the state of Espírito Santo, in the middle of a joke.
“From the testimony of the people who were at the place, we were able to define the time when the clock was turned off. From there, through the surveillance cameras, we realized that a child, just 9 years old, who was playing at the place, ended up on a bench in front of the clock “, reported Civil Police agent Fabrício Lucindo, in a video shared by the local press.
“Curious because a red lamp was flashing inside the clock and he (the child) ended up turning off the clock to try to turn it off. Turning off the clock and turning off the lamp, he came back with the games again. That is, an innocent child’s play that ended up creating this whole problem “, stressed the owner of the Rio Bananal police station.
The joke ended up leading the city, of approximately 19 thousand inhabitants, to lose all available vaccines of the covid-19 immunizer, as well as other types of antidotes, blood tests and medications.
At first, the Municipality of Rio Bananal suspected it was an act of vandalism, a situation now ruled out by the police, after viewing the video surveillance images.
Brazil has so far vaccinated around 5.5 million people, less than 3% of its population and mostly doctors, indigenous people and the elderly, but several municipalities have had to suspend their immunization campaigns due to lack of doses and the Government only foresees the next deliveries of antidotes at the end of February.
The Brazilian Minister of Health, Eduardo Pazuello, announced today that the Government will distribute 4.7 million vaccines between the end of February and the beginning of March, and asked the mayors to apply all of them to the priority population without reserving the necessary second doses, to speed up the immunization campaign.
According to Pazuello, as the ministry will receive 21 million vaccines in March, the distribution of batches of the second dose is guaranteed on time.
Brazil is the Portuguese-speaking country most affected by the pandemic and one of the hardest hit in the world, when it accounts for the second highest number of deaths (243,457, in more than 10 million cases), after the United States.
The covid-19 pandemic caused at least 2,441,926 deaths worldwide, resulting from more than 110.2 million cases of infection, according to a report by the French agency AFP.
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