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Coronavac is safe and necessary for children right now, says Dimas Covas

The president of the Butantan Institute, Dimas Covas, said that Coronavac is safe and necessary in the fight against Covid-19, including the vaccination of children.

In an interview with CNN on Monday (17), Covas said he hopes that the extension of the Institute’s emergency use of the vaccine can be approved this week by the National Health Surveillance Agency (Anvisa). The agency and Butantan maintain contact to discuss information on the matter.

“We offer Anvisa a relevant set of data on Coronavac, a dossier on the use and safety of the vaccine in China, with more than 211 million children and adolescents vaccinated”, said the president of Butantan.

“It’s a safe vaccine, the safest of all the vaccines that are being used,” he added.

As he explained, Coronavac is based on an inactivated virus, which makes it more accessible and easily transported, as it does not require storage at very low temperatures. In addition, this technology is already known and is also used in other childhood vaccines.

“It makes Butantan very proud for having brought this vaccine to Brazil a year ago, acting in the most serious moment of the pandemic”, he said.

Covas said that Coronavac resists well to variants of the coronavirus, such as Ômicron, which has caused an exponential increase in the number of Covid cases in Brazil. He also said that the country should continue to see an increase in infections in the coming weeks and that “fortunately vaccines are holding back the number of deaths”.

During the interview, the president of Butantan said that there are 15 million doses of Coronavac ready for use, awaiting release for use, and that another 110 million doses could be delivered to the federal government, but that there was no request.

Dimas Covas pointed out that it is important for Brazil to develop independence in the vaccine area, and that there is room for growth in the immunization industry in the country.

“A vaccine is not rejected, it is not labeled. Vaccine is used as available. And we have to learn that, because new pandemics will come,” he said.

Watch the full interview in the video above.

Reference: CNN Brasil

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