This Sunday (20), Brazil received a batch with 842,000 doses of the vaccine produced by the American pharmaceutical company Pfizer. It is the first shipment from Pfizer that the country has received through the World Health Organization’s global consortium, the COVAX Facility.

Until the arrival of this batch, Brazil had received about 5 million doses via COVAX; in previous batches, vaccines came from AstraZeneca/Oxford. Under the contract with COVAX, Brazil should receive 42.5 million doses by the end of the year.

In addition to the doses from Pfizer received via COVAX, Brazil has purchased another 200 million doses of the immunizing agent, of which 10.7 million doses have already been delivered in 14 batches by Pfizer. It is estimated that all doses contracted by the federal government will be delivered by the end of 2021.

According to Our World in Data, from the University of Oxford, Brazil has already given 85.3 million doses of COVID-19 (considering the first and second doses). The number of Brazilians fully vaccinated against COVID-19 represents only 11% of the country’s population; on the other hand, Brazilians partly vaccinated represent 17% of the population.

Yesterday, Brazil reached the mark of 500,000 deaths by COVID-19, becoming the second country in the world to surpass half a million deaths due to the disease.