RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – After João Doria proudly announced a few days ago, the first all-Brazilian Covid vaccine developed and produced in São Paulo, the whole country was in awe.
While Bolsonaro is accused of “genocide” because of his Covid management, one of his biggest political opponents, São Paulo’s governor, turned out to be a hero. Thanks to his initiative, Brazil will soon no longer be dependent on vaccine imports. A better position for the upcoming election campaign could not have been imagined in the country. And now this. Butanvac is not an all Brazilian vaccine. It is American, at least partially.
São Paulo governor João Doria said he didn’t have the information that ButanVac relied on foreign technology for its development. The statement was made at a press conference held this Monday (March 29).
“I understand that ButanVac is a national vaccine, a Brazilian vaccine. The important thing is that we have a vaccine. If it has international technology, this is positive. We have to fight this pandemic with all the forces, all the alternatives available in Brazil and in the world”, he said.
On Friday (March 26) the Butantan Institute, linked to the São Paulo state government, announced that it has developed a vaccine against the Sars-CoV-2 coronavirus – the ButanVac. The immunizer was said to have already passed through the pre-clinical phases of testing (in laboratory cells and in animals) with good results, according to the institute.
Initially announced as the first 100% national immunization, ButanVac had, in fact, its development started by researchers from Mount Sinai Hospital, New York, as revealed by the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo on the same day of the vaccine announcement. Later, Butantan admitted the partnership with the hospital and said that it has the license to use and explore part of the technology developed in the United States.
ButanVac will be manufactured in chicken eggs, the same way the institute already produces immunizers against the flu. Embryonated eggs (with embryos still alive) will receive the Newcastle Disease virus (NCD, a type of bird flu), harmless to humans, carrying the genetic information of Sars-CoV-2. The result will be an inactivated vaccine, made with fragments of dead virus.
The main advantage of ButanVac, according to scientists, is that it can be made from start to finish within Brazil, without depending for supplies on foreign companies or other countries.
Currently, there are political disputes over the distribution of vaccines and the raw material for immunizers, dominated by a few countries. The resulting impasses delay immunization in nations that are not able to fully manufacture the substances domestically.
Following the ButanVac announcement, the federal government held a surprise press conference on the afternoon of Friday (March 26) to announce that it was boosting the clinical trials of another national vaccine, developed at USP of Ribeirão Preto (also linked to the government of São Paulo) in partnership with a Brazilian pharmaceutical group and a foreign company. The announcements made on the same day raised the tone of the dispute over the vaccines between the São Paulo government and the federal government.
The two experimental vaccines are waiting for ANVISA (Brazil’s health regulatory agency) authorization to start human trials. Butantan claims that it could deliver 40 million doses of ButanVac by the end of 2021 if the immunizer is approved.
“Speed up, Minister,” Doria said in a message to Science, Technology and Innovations Minister Marcos Pontes, who made the announcement of the federally funded immunizer. “Here in São Paulo we are already producing the vaccine,” he added.
The governor made the statements during a vaccine delivery at the Butantan Institute on Monday (29). An additional 5 million doses of Coronavac, used against the Sars-CoV-2 coronavirus, were sent to the Ministry of Health.
The immunizers are sent to the PNI (National Immunization Program) to be distributed proportionally among the states.
With the delivery of the vaccines on Monday, the total number of units of immunizers passed on by the government of São Paulo to the Ministry of Health has reached 32.8 million units. The shipments began on January 17.