Friocruz, AstraZeneca ink deal to import API in 2022

Brazil’s Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz) and pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca signed an agreement for the purchase of the active pharmaceutical ingredient (API). The new batches of the API will make it possible for Fiocruz’s Rio-based Immuno-biological Technology Institute (Bio-Manguinhos) to manufacture 60 million doses of the vaccine against COVID-19 in 2022.

The deal is expected to enable Bio-Manguinhos to step up deliveries under Brazil’s National Immunization Program early next year, for which 60 million doses of the vaccine produced with Brazil-made API had been expected. Thus, the country’s Unified Health Care System, the SUS, should receive 120 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine against COVID-19 in the first six months next year.

Fiocruz states that the highest availability of doses will allow the Health ministry to establish different vaccination protocols and use the vaccine to implement booster doses among groups where it is needed most.

“Fiocruz is seeking to anticipate the possible scenarios of evolution of the pandemic in order to meet the demands of the Health Ministry and the Brazilian society, and ensuring the API early next year will give us this flexibility. Today, once again, we rely with AstraZeneca’s partnership, a partnership that has been grown stronger and expanding also in the handling of other issues,” Foundation President Nísia Trindade Lima wrote in a text published by the Fiocruz News Agency.

The signing ceremony on Thursday (Oct. 28) was attended by Health Minister Marcelo Queiroga, Fiocruz President Nísia Trindade Lima, AstraZeneca’s Global CEO Pascal Soriot, and AstraZeneca’s Brazil President Carlos Sánchez-Luis.