Officials working in the Brazilian Health Ministry’s vaccine distribution division have told The Brazilian Report that department head Marcelo Queiroga ordered them to withhold around 100,000 jabs of the single-shot Janssen coronavirus vaccine.
The decision was made in June, say multiple sources, and lacked a clear justification. “Allegedly, the Health Ministry would use these doses for research, but they gave us no further detail,” one person confirmed.
Brazil received a batch with 1.5 million Janssen vaccines on June 22, which could “speed up the [vaccination] process,” Mr. Queiroga said at the time. By then, rollouts were progressing at a snail’s pace and only 11.6 percent of Brazilians had been fully immunized. Despite his stated intent, the minister would have then withheld roughly 100,000 doses...
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