More than 1.5 million brazilians did not go to the health posts yet to take the second dose from Covid-19 vaccine, reported the Ministry of Health, which seeks to strengthen its campaign to complete immunization.
“We need to communicate efficiently with the population to get involved, to appear at the vaccination posts to take the first and second doses, and to follow the other measures: use of a mask and distancing,” said the minister on Wednesday. of Health, Marcelo Queiroga, in Brasilia.
So far, the country of 212 million people has vaccinated 23.8 million people with the first dose and 7.3 million with the second, according to ministry figures.
A total of one million 514 thousand 627 people did not attend to take the second dose within the expected period.
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The health authorities of the different Brazilian states and municipalities, the primary source of data on vaccination, nevertheless point out that there may be a “gap” in the numbers presented by the Ministry and that the actual number of people who missed their second dose may be less.
“Due to the population’s need to take the vaccine, I do not believe that this is happening, that people are not going to get (the second dose). I think that what is happening is a delay in the information of the data given to the Ministry, “Mauro Junqueira, president of the National Council of Municipal Health Secretaries (Conasems), told Globo TV.
The Ministry of Health urged people to go in search of their second dose, even if it is late.
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Brazil is immunizing its population mainly with the Chinese Coronavac vaccine, with an interval of 28 days between both doses, and to a lesser extent with that of AstraZeneca/Oxford, which foresees an interval of 84 days.
Another of the authorized immunizers is that of Pfizer, also with a double dose, which will begin to arrive in the country from the end of April, with 15.5 million doses scheduled until June. The government announced that it managed to anticipate the shipment of two million doses of this vaccine for the first semester.
The government intends to accelerate the rate of vaccination and apply 2.4 million doses per day, the maximum capacity of its National Immunization Program (PNI), but since it began its campaign in January it has faced a shortage of supplies and delays in importing doses.
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The official schedule foresees having a total of 520 million doses of anti-covid vaccines in 2021, but more than half are planned for the second semester.
Specialists attribute part of this shortage to the government’s delay in entering into purchase agreements with the different pharmaceutical groups.
jabf / lsm
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