The Coronavac, produced in Brazil by Butantan Institute in partnership with the Chinese laboratory Sinovac, will have its production temporarily discontinued due to lack of inputs, CNN Brasil reports, citing three sources familiar with the matter.
Butantan will keep the delivery of vaccines next week, as it has 2.5 million doses already ready waiting for the quality control deadline, says the report.
According to CNN, Butantan further informed that it will meet the deadlines set in contracts with the country’s Ministry of Health, despite the delay in the arrival of inputs. The institute has committed to deliver 46 million doses by the end of April.
A new shipment of Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs) was scheduled to arrive from China by next Friday, April 9, but was postponed. In a press conference on Wednesday, São Paulo’s governor João Doria acknowledged the delay.
Doria said at the conference that he reached out to the Chinese ambassador Yang Wanming, in the country’s capital, Brasília, through a phone call. Two days ago, Wanming posted on his Twitter account about a meeting with Brazil’s Minister of Health, Marcelo Queiroga, assuring that China would continue to send inputs to the country, recalls CNN.
According to the news outlet, the new estimated arrival of 6,000 liters of APIs in São Paulo, enough to produce 10 million vaccine doses, is on April 15.
The delay in shipping inputs, supplied to Butantan by China’s Sinovac, was caused due to a more intense vaccination campaign in China. Up to now, the country had been exporting a fair amount of their vaccines as they would have COVID-19 infections under control.