Gov’t to deliver 15.5 mi Pfizer doses by June

Brazil’s Health Minister Marcelo Queiroga today (Apr. 14) said that the delivery of doses of vaccine Pfizer against COVID-19 will take place ahead of schedule. A total of 15.5 million doses will be delivered from April to June.

“I bring you good news: the early delivery of doses of the Pfizer vaccine, as a result of direct action by President Jair Bolsonaro with Pfizer’s main executive, resulting in 15.5 million Pfizer doses in April, May, and June,” he said in a pronouncement, after taking part in the second meeting of the National Coordination Committee for Tackling the COVID-19 Pandemic, at the Planalto presidential palace, in Brasília.

Also present at the meeting were Senate head Rodrigo Pacheco and nurse Francieli Fantinato, who was announced by Queiroga as the Health Ministry’s extraordinary secretary for tackling COVID-19. Fantinato is currently coordinator of the National Immunizations Program (PNI), of the Ministry of Health.

New measures to speed up the purchase of medications and oxygen were also unveiled in the address, in addition to a proposal of employment generation programs and initiatives to offer to children who lost their parents to COVID-19.

The committee, created in March this yeas, is made up of President Jair Bolsonaro, Senate head Rodrigo Pacheco, lower house speaker Arthur Lira, and a representative from the Judiciary, as an observer. The health minister and other of the government also ed the committee.