Fiocruz delivers 80 million COVID-19 vaccine doses

Through the Immunobiological Technology Institute (Bio-Manguinhos/Fiocruz), Brazil’s Fiocruz has reached 80.4 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine made available to the National Immunization Program (PNI), delivering around 2.2 million doses on July 30.

Of these, 76.4 million were processed at Fiocruz and 4 million were imported ready to use from the Serum Institute of India (SII). Another milestone of the foundation is related to national sovereignty when it comes to vaccine production. The manufacturing of the first pre-validation batch of the COVID-19 vaccine using the active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) produced at Bio-Manguinhos has begun.

The batches are now in the cellular expansion phase, during which cells are cultured and multiplied so they can later be infected with the virus, receive the enzymatic treatment and proceed into the next steps. Two pre-validation and three validation batches will be produced and then submitted to quality control tests at Bio-Manguinhos and to comparison tests with AstraZeneca (LSE: AZN) vaccines.