Brazil starts vaccination of its Tokyo Olympics delegation

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Brazil started this Friday the vaccination of the 1,814 members of the delegation representing the country at the Olympic Games in Tokyo, to be held from July 23 to August 8.

The vaccination is concentrated in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, where 90% of the Olympic and Paralympic delegation components reside, among athletes, coaches, referees, delegates, and journalists. It will also be carried out in other cities such as Brasilia, Belo Horizonte, Porto Alegre, and Fortaleza.

The first person vaccinated was the four-time Paralympic judo champion Antonio Tenorio, fifty years old, who received the Cominarty vaccine at the Paralympic Training Center in São Paulo.

The delegation was included as a priority group of the Government’s National Immunization Plan (PNI), and two doses per person of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine were reserved from a batch of 7,000 vials donated by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), the surplus of which will be given to the public health network.

“We are very pleased to be able to go to the Games immunized and, even more, to be able to offer these additional doses to Brazilians at no cost,” said the president of the Brazilian Olympic Committee (BOC), Paulo Wanderley Teixeira, at a press conference in Rio de Janeiro.

The launching ceremony of the Olympic delegation’s vaccination campaign in Rio de Janeiro was attended by the Minister of Health, Marcelo Queiroga. “Japan is a very developed country. It is stipulating safe protocols, and we need alternatives to live with health security in this pandemic environment. One of them is vaccination, ” said Queiroga.

The minister took advantage of his participation to rule out any “diplomatic problem” with China that could hinder the supply of ingredients for the local production of the Coronavac vaccine, from the Chinese laboratory Sinovac together with the Brazilian state-owned Instituto Butantan, which stopped production due to a lack of raw material.

During the event in Rio de Janeiro, the first female athletes vaccinated were Ana Marcela Cunha, world aquatic marathon champion; Rosángela Santos, bronze medalist in track and field in Beijing 2008 and Larissa Oliveira, ten-time Pan American Games medalist swimmer.

“Being able to receive this vaccine brings a lot of security. In three weeks, we will receive the second dose, and then we will arrive in Japan without major problems”, said Cunha.

Marcus D’Almeida, Pan American archery runner-up, and Michel Pessanha, Paralympic paddler, also received the vaccine.

“If athletes did not exist, these vaccines might not reach Brazil. There are millions of people wanting this vaccine, but I feel that sport is doing its part because for each dose received by us, two more will be donated to the SUS (National Health Service)”, highlighted D’Almeida.

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