The Brazilian government launched a nationwide coronavirus vaccination campaign on Monday (January 18) under the iconic statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro.

Footage shows the first vaccination of Rio citizens, two nurses, in front of the press, and a cheering audience.

The state of São Paulo began vaccinations on Sunday (January 17), bringing the immunisation campaign forward.

"The governors asked me to speed up the distribution as much as possible so that they could start vaccinating today," said Health Minister Eduardo Pazuello, who initially planned a simultaneous launch for all states on Wednesday.

Brazil has 6 million doses of Sinovac’s CoronaVac vaccine and is awaiting the arrival of 2 million doses of the vaccine made by AstraZeneca.

SHOTLIST:

1. Various of Christ the Redeemer and the city of Rio de Janeiro from the air
2. Various of Christ the Redeemer
3. Various of the vaccination of the first two nurses in Rio de Janeiro

STORYLINE:


The Brazilian government brought forward the launch of its national coronavirus vaccination campaign for this Monday, after the state of Sao Paulo began inoculation on Sunday without waiting for the start order, a decision that represented an open challenge to President Jair Bolsonaro.

"The governors asked me to speed up the distribution as much as possible so that they could start vaccinating today," said Health Minister Eduardo Pazuello, who initially planned a simultaneous launch in all states on Wednesday with the application of the Chinese Coronavac vaccine. , approved for emergency use.

Rio de Janeiro, the state with the highest death rate in the country (151 per 100,000 inhabitants), vaccinated its first two citizens under the iconic statue of Christ the Redeemer as it fell the afternoon.

Other states such as Goiás (center-west) and Santa Catarina (south) also began their campaigns on Monday.

The state of Amazonas, hit by a second wave of the pandemic that caused an increase in deaths from lack of oxygen and the overflow of hospitals, expected to receive the shipment at the end of the day and begin immunizing on Tuesday.

But the one who obtained the photo for the story was the governor of Sao Paulo, Joao Doria - a probable opponent of Bolsonaro in the 2022 elections - who immediately after the authorization of Coronavac on Sunday attended the immunization of the nurse Mônica Calazans, first person to be vaccinated in Brazil.

A hundred people were vaccinated that same day and the process continued on Monday from the first hours at the Hospital de Clínicas in the economic capital of the country, focused on health professionals.

Vaccination in Brazil, where the pandemic has already killed 210,000 people (a balance exceeded only by the United States), starts anyway several weeks behind the most affected countries, including some in the region such as Argentina, Mexico or Chile.

Bolsonaro, on his part, spoke about the beginning of the campaign to criticize Doria: "The vaccine is from Brazil and not from a governor," he told his followers in Brasilia.

Doria was able to go ahead because the health regulator (Anvisa) authorized on Sunday the emergency use of 6 million doses of Coronavac, produced by the Chinese laboratory Sinovac together with the Butantan Institute, in the state of Sao Paulo.

The Butantan requested this Monday the regulator authorization to use a second batch already available, of 4.8 million doses.

Anvisa also authorized the use of two million vaccines from Britain's AstraZenevca / Oxford, in cooperation with the Fiocruz Foundation (of the Brazilian Ministry of Health), for which Bolsonaro was betting, but which have yet to reach the country from India, where they are manufactured.