Brazil’s Fiocruz to suspend Covid-19 vaccine delivery for 2 weeks

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz) on Thursday said it will suspend deliveries to the Ministry of Health for 2 weeks of AstraZeneca vaccine doses against Covid-19 bottled by the institution due to a delay in the shipment of raw materials.

Two active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) shipments landed in Brazil on August 25 and 30, and a new batch will be delivered this Friday, September 3, later than originally scheduled.

With the delay, the next deliveries of completed vaccine batches are only scheduled for the week of September 13 to 17.

“The whole process, from the arrival of the raw material to vaccine delivery takes about 3 weeks, including the quality control period,” Fiocruz said in a statement.

“All doses related to the API batch received on August 25 have been produced and are in the quality control stage. Part of the batch received on August 30 has also been produced. There are currently 6.1 million doses in the quality control stage and the remainder in production,” it added.

Since the start of the year, Fiocruz has delivered 91.9 million vaccine doses to the National Immunization Program (PNI), representing a delay in the original forecast to deliver 100 million doses by July.

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