RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Brazil will receive between 10 million and 14 million doses of Oxford/AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine starting in mid-February through the World Health Organization’s COVAX program, the health ministry said on Saturday, January 30th.
Brazil has had 58,462 new confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus reported in the past 24 hours, and 1,279 deaths from COVID-19, the ministry said.
The South American country has now registered 9,176,975 cases since the pandemic began, while the official death toll has risen to 223,945, according to ministry data, in the world’s third worst outbreak.
The health ministry said it had received a letter from the W.H.O. about the delivery of the vaccine, which AstraZeneca developed in partnership with Oxford University.
On Friday, Brazilian health regulator Anvisa said that AstraZeneca had applied for full regulatory approval, a positive note for the country’s difficult vaccine rollout. The submission, the first of its kind in Brazil, was made by the federally funded Fiocruz Institute, which will manufacture the vaccine in Rio de Janeiro.