Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: Most Brazilians are angry at their government’s decision to legally enable the largest South American country’s rich and famous to get a preference in vaccination, at a time when experts apprehend around 100,000 new deaths in April, most of them poor, and another 500,000 by mid-2021 due to the resurgent Brazil-origin strain of Covid-19.
Brasilia’s vaccine rollout has so far been dismal as only 8 percent of its 212 million population could be vaccinated. Brazil is currently the third most coronavirus-affected nation after the US and India, with 13.5 million infections and over 355,000 deaths recorded. On average, 3,000 people die of coronavirus every day.
Last week, the National Congress of Brazil, the country’s legislative body, backed a bill permitting private companies to purchase vaccines from individual suppliers for inoculation of their employees and others, even before frontline workers and at-risk groups have received them, media reported on Tuesday.
The parliamentary attempt to give preferential treatment to the rich and famous triggered an outrage not only among the people but also among health officials. They said the National Congress allowed private companies access to vaccines at a time when the country’s intensive care units are overflowing with patients and cases are on a rise at around 4,000 per day.
According to the legislation, the government has allowed the private sector to purchase vaccines but will have to donate them to the health ministry until a 100 percent vaccination rate is achieved among all priority groups. In other words, the companies could buy vaccines from the market, give them to the government which would then preferentially inoculate the rich and the famous.
Health experts apprehend that this selective move will only widen the gulf between the rich and poor in one of the most unequal countries in the world.
Brazil was once known for its prompt health response and vaccination programs. However, its current President Jair Bolsonaro not only downplayed the pandemic and doubted the vaccines’ efficacy, but he also refused to clamp a lockdown, saying the people would then die either of hunger or from the pandemic. This resulted in the resurgence of Covid-19 and, early this year, more people died in two months than they did in 10 months in 2020.
The situation in Brazil, according to reports, was so grim that not only the government was forced to plan new graveyards but also dig out skeletons from old graves to make space for new corpses in some states.
In March, Brazil’s business elite, in an open letter, targeted Bolsonaro without naming him, and demanded stronger action after failing to implement national lockdowns and “flirting with the anti-vaccine movement.”
Due to his inept handling of the pandemic, Bolsonaro’s popularity has plummeted, with a record 59 percent rejecting him, according to reports.