Oxford-Fiocruz vaccine is authorised for emergency use

At the end of the 1^st Extraordinary Public Meeting of the Collegiate Board, held on January 17, the Brazilian Health Regulatory Agency (Anvisa) authorized the emergency use of two vaccines against Covid-19: Oxford-AstraZeneca, Fiocruz, and Coronavac, of the Butantan Institute. A historic day for Anvisa and also for Brazil, marking the beginning of vaccination in the country.

The emergency request submitted by Fiocruz refers to the 2 million ready-made vaccines that will be imported from the Serum Institute, one of the centers trained by AstraZeneca to produce the vaccine in India. The vaccines will arrive at Fiocruz today (January 21) and it will be delivered to Ministry of Health tomorrow (January 22), after going through quality and safety checks, in addition to labeling, with labeling of the boxes with information in Portuguese

"Fiocruz and its entire technical staff have been tirelessly dedicated to making vaccines available to the Brazilian Public Health System and the Brazilian population. The authorization of the emergency use reflects the seriousness of the work that has been done by the institution. Fiocruz has carried out all possible actions in its sphere of competence so that these vaccines reach their destination as soon as possible", highlights the President of the Foundation, Nísia Trindade Lima.

For the head of the Institute of Technology in Immunobiologicals (Bio-Manguinhos/Fiocruz), Maurício Zuma, the process of submission of the request for emergency use was hard work, which involved a huge range of information and a lot of dedication. "The approval by Anvisa proves that we have a safe and effective vaccine to make available to the population; and we are not measuring efforts to make this happen as soon as possible," Zuma said.