Brazil's health regulator has approved the emergency use of COVID-19 vaccines from China's Sinovac Biotech and Britain's AstraZeneca as the pandemic enters a deadly second wave.
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Brazilian health regulator Anvisa voted unanimously to approve both vaccines after almost five hours of deliberation by its board of directors.
President Jair Bolsonaro, a coronavirus skeptic who has refused to take a vaccine himself, is under growing pressure to start inoculations in Brazil, which has lost more than 200,000 to COVID-19, the worst death toll outside the US.
However, delays with vaccine shipments and testing results have held up vaccinations in the country, once a global leader in mass immunisations and now a regional laggard after peers such as Chile and Mexico started giving shots last month.
Bolsonaro's government was planning to kick off a national immunisation program this week but is still waiting on shipments of the AstraZeneca vaccine at the centre of its plans. That has added to public frustration and offered a political rival the chance to upstage the right-wing president.
Sao Paulo Governor Joao Doria, who oversees the Butantan biomedical center that partnered with Sinovac in Brazil on the Chinese shot known as CoronaVac, said vaccinations could start immediately.
Bolsonaro, for whom Doria is a potential centre-right rival to his 2022 re-election efforts, has taunted the governor over CoronaVac's disappointing 50 per cent efficacy in Brazilian trials, but the federal Health Ministry has agreed to acquire and distribute the shot for the national immunisation drive.
Adding to urgency for vaccinations, a second wave of the outbreak in Brazil is snowballing as the country confronts a new, potentially more contagious variant of the coronavirus that originated in Amazonas and prompted Britain and Italy to bar entry to Brazilians.
Australian Associated Press
