An open letter to US President Joe Biden calls on the US government to mobilize to speed up vaccination against Covid-19 and curb the spread of the disease in Brazil.
More than 400 people signed the document, including Brazilians (foreign academics who study Brazil) and Brazilians who live in the country. In the call to the Democrat, the authors classify the state of the health care system as on the verge of collapse. Seven states have an intensive care bed occupancy rate for Covid greater than 90%, while nine capital cities exceed the same rate, according to a Folha report.
The text also speaks of the risk of the emergence of new variants if the situation is not controlled. Therefore, the document calls on Biden to mobilize U.S. government support from businesses, governments and international partners to quickly deliver vaccines and slow the spread of the virus in Brazil.
While recording a moving average of over 1,000 deaths per day for four months, immunization is progressing slowly across the country, with 20% of the adult population having already received at least one dose. Vaccine production, meanwhile, has been on hold due to lack of supplies. Since the start of the pandemic, Brazil has totaled 449,000 deaths and 16 million cases.
The text also asks the president to encourage partnerships between companies that develop and produce vaccination agents and Brazil, which has “a long history of development and production and the ability to distribute them effectively throughout the country, thanks to to its Unique Health System (SUS) “.
The Brazilian government, however, rejected 70 million doses of Pfizer last year, as published by Folha and confirmed by the pharmaceutical company. At Covid’s CPI, the company’s Latin America chief executive Carlos Murillo said the automaker made at least five offers in Brazil in 2020.
The letter to the US president, supported by the American Network for Democracy in Brazil (USNDB), is the first step in a campaign to mobilize the Brazilian community in the country. The network brings together more than 1,500 people in 234 colleges and universities in 45 US states.