Group of Brazilian politicians and businessmen buy vaccines and immunize family members

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Congressman and former Minister of Health Alexandre Padilha  asked the Public Ministry of Minas Gerais to confiscate the vaccines against Covid-19 acquired by politicians and businessmen from Minas Gerais without passing on doses to SUS (Single Health System).

“Such sanitary irresponsibility is unacceptable, even more so at the moment in which Brazil completes 300 thousand deaths,” Padilha states in the lawsuit.

“It should be noted that the recent Law 14.125/2021 allows private legal entities to acquire vaccines, but imposes limits and rules for their use,” follows the deputy.

The lawsuit also asks the agency to investigate the possible commission of criminal offenses by the accused.

On Wednesday (24), Piauí magazine revealed that a group of politicians and businessmen, most of them connected to the transportation sector in Minas Gerais, and their families, took on Tuesday (23) the first of two doses of the Pfizer vaccine against Covid-19, in the city of Belo Horizonte.

According to the publication, they bought the immunizer on their own initiative and did not pass it on to SUS (Single Health System). The second dose is scheduled to be applied to about fifty people in thirty days. The two doses cost each person R$600 (US$109).

According to people who were vaccinated in the occasion, the organizers were the brothers Romulo and Robson Lessa, owners of the Saritur bus company. A garage of a company of the group was improvised as a vaccination station.