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A nurse has received the first vaccine dose of Brazil's Covid-19 immunisation programme after health regulators gave emergency approval to two jabs.
Regulator Anvisa gave the green light to vaccines from Oxford-AstraZeneca and China's Sinovac, doses of which will be distributed among all 27 states.
Brazil's vaccine programme has started later than many of its regional peers.
This is despite the severity of its epidemic, and the world's second highest death toll.
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who has played down the pandemic from the beginning, has come under renewed fire in recent months as Brazil has gone through a devastating second wave of the virus.
Authorities reported 551 new fatalities on Sunday, the first time in six days that it had fallen short of 1,000.
In all, more than 209,000 Covid-related deaths have been recorded in Brazil, a raw total figure only exceeded by the US.
Over 8.4 million infections have been confirmed since the start of the pandemic - the third-highest tally in the world.
Health Minister Eduardo Pazuello told reporters that the national vaccination programme in the country of 211 million people would be assisted by two Brazilian biomedical centres which have been given approval to produce the jabs.
Shortly after Anvisa's board gave emergency approval, Monica Calazans, a 54-year-old nurse in São Paulo, became the first person to be inoculated with CoronaVac, developed by Sinovac.
This comes as a relief to many Brazilians who've been waiting anxiously for news about when vaccinations would start.
The pandemic has become deeply political in Brazil - from the very beginning, São Paulo's governor João Doria, who's expected to run in presidential elections next year, has backed CoronaVac.
Meanwhile, President Bolsonaro has refused to be proactive in coming up with a clear inoculation plan and continues to sow unfounded doubts about vaccines.
All the while hospitals are coming under increasing pressure with cities like Manaus seeing a collapse of their health systems as the number of infected people continues to soar.
Earlier this week researchers said the Chinese vaccine had been found to be 50.4% effective in Brazilian clinical trials . This, results showed, was significantly less effective than previous data suggested - barely over the 50% needed for regulatory approval.
CoronaVac is also being used in China, Indonesia and Turkey.
The news comes after revelations that a new coronavirus variant has emerged in Brazil. Several cases were traced back to the country's Amazonas region, where a state of emergency is in place.
Manaus, the region's capital city, has been hit especially hard, with beds and life-saving oxygen running low. Refrigerated containers have also been brought to hospitals to help store bodies.
President Bolsonaro has faced mounting criticism for his handling of Brazil's outbreak, and several anti-government protests were held last week.
An opponent of lockdowns, he has previously blamed state governors and mayors for the Covid crisis, saying the federal government has provided all the resources needed to tackle the virus.
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from Via PakapNews