With no guarantee of delivery or guarantee from the manufacturers, the parallel market for vaccines presents, at least, suspicious offers for the sale of immunizing agents against Covid-19 . And the proposals even come through WhatsApp. That’s what happened to the newspaper Estadão last week. The German company GB Trading, which sells gloves, masks and alcohol gel over the internet, presented the vehicle with a proposal for 20 million vials of the Anglo-Swedish Vaxzevria vaccine , from Oxford-AstraZeneca, worth 4 euros a dose (around BRL 26.50). Questioned about the safety of the purchase, mainly due to the need to pay 50% in advance, the representative of GB Trading would have dodged and denied that it was a scam.
With prices and delivery schedules of up to 30 days, better terms than those the federal government has obtained in major negotiations, offers like this one seem attractive, but they represent a picture of the underground in the vaccine trade.
According to the Pharmaceutical Products Industry Union (Sindusfarma), manufacturers already authorized in Brazil claim that they only sell to the Ministry of Health and to initiatives such as Covax Facility, a consortium led by the World Health Organization (WHO), “following criteria international and collective interest”. “AstraZeneca, Butantan, Janssen and Pfizer are negotiating, supplying and distributing their Covid-19 vaccines exclusively to federal governments and international public bodies in the health area. Therefore, at this time, no company or individual is authorized to negotiate on behalf of these vaccine manufacturers. Covid-19 with any public or private entity, either directly or indirectly”, says the official statement from the union.
Nelson Mussolini, executive president of the agency, guarantees that “serious companies will only provide for governments, even for the reason that governments are assuming the possible adverse effect”.
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Despite the manifestations of manufacturers, micro to large businessmen, as well as mayors and governors, seek immunization through intercessors. However, sellers in the official market claim that no one has been able to import the doses so far. In a clandestine attempt to skip the vaccine line, businessmen in Minas Gerais received serum instead of Pfizer’s vaccine, according to the Federal Police.
Federal government encourages purchase by private companies
At the beginning of the year, Brazilian businessmen were negotiating the purchase of 33 million vaccines from Oxford-AstraZeneca, for US$ 23.80 each (around R$ 134.10 a dose). The federal government supported the purchase, demanding, in return, the donation of part of the lot to the SUS. The deal didn’t work out, despite the mobilization. Both the manufacturer and the Blackrock investment fund, appointed by the businessmen as an interlocutor, denied that the doses and the negotiation existed.
The strong lobby to make the purchase of vaccines by the private sector more flexible gives impetus to the market parallel to that of manufacturers. The theme returned to the focus in a meeting of President Jair Bolsonaro with businessmen, on the last day of the 7th. The Court has given the guarantee for purchases to be made without the need to donate the entire volume to the SUS, while priority groups are immunized, as required by law. .
The Brazilian Association of Vaccine Clinics (ABCVAC) has an agreement to purchase 5 million doses of Covaxin, a vaccine developed by India’s Bharat Biotech, through the laboratory’s official representative in Brazil, Need Medicines. The forecast is that the doses will cost members from US$ 32.71 (R$ 184.66) to US$ 40.78 (R$ 230.22), but the entity says that the current legislation makes it difficult for the clinics to negotiate , for requiring donation of up to the entire volume to SUS. In addition, the use of Covaxin still needs to be approved by Anvisa.
Sources: Estadão / Sindusfarma
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