Coronavirus: Brazil’s spat over vaccine from China is more about politics than health policy
- Row between Brazilian president and Sao Paulo governor escalates after suspension of late-stage CoronaVac trials
- Research institute chief accuses health regulator of stoking fear among the public
“Death, disablement, anomaly. This is the vaccine that Doria wants to force the people of São Paulo to take,” Bolsonaro said on Tuesday.
Local media, citing a police investigation, reported that the death of the participant on October 29, a 32-year-old male who was not named, was being treated as a suspected suicide. While this suggests the suspension of the vaccine trials may soon be lifted, Brazilian medical authorities were putting out conflicting messages on Tuesday.
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Dimas Covas, president of the São Paulo-based Instituto de Butantan, the research body working with Sinovac to test and eventually produce CoronaVac, said trials could resume this week. He told a press conference the health regulator, known as Anvisa, was aware the participant’s death was not related to the vaccine.
“Anvisa has all the information and I tell you the conclusion of their report is this: the adverse event was analysed and it is unrelated to the vaccine,” he said.
But Covas then accused the regulator, saying the decision to suspend the trials was needlessly stoking fear among the public and the thousands of participants in the late-stage clinical trials.
“[Anvisa] created an environment that is most unfortunate because of the fact the vaccine is made in association with China. They created this discrediting without reason. For what?” Covas said.
Anvisa called its own press conference the same day and shot back at the Butantan research institute, saying it had not provided all the data the regulator needed about the “adverse event”, adding that the trials would remain suspended until it was satisfied about safety.
“We do not have proof nor data that give confidence the trials can continue,” said Anvisa’s general manager for medicines Gustavo Mendes.
Oliver Stuenkel, an associate professor of International Relations at the Getúlio Vargas Foundation in São Paulo, said the issue has been politicised by Bolsonaro and Doria.
“Doria uses this theme [of the vaccine] to differentiate himself from Bolsonaro and show he is a man that believes in science, all for his future [presidential] campaign, but Bolsonaro is also using this to create the narrative that Doria is controlled by the Chinese,” Stuenkel said.
Just hours before Anvisa announced the suspension of the trials on Monday, Doria took to Twitter to post a video, showing him inside the 10,000 square metre (108,000 sq ft) factory in Sao Paulo where CoronaVac will be produced.
“This new factory will have the capacity to produce 100 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines per year. A historic feat for SP [São Paulo] and Brazil,” he said.
Bolsonaro and his inner circle were heavily influenced by US President Donald Trump’s tough-on-China policy, but now he was on his way out of the White House, the Brazilian president had less motivation to pursue such a policy with a trading partner as important as China, he said.
“The Brazilian government fears a Chinese retaliation and [Bolsonaro’s] discourse is purely ideological, it is not tied to reality,” Caramuru de Paiva said.
