translated from Spanish: Former staff say Brazil ignored Pfizer’s first vaccine offering

Former Brazilian government communications chief Fabio Wajngarten said wednesday that Pfizer’s first vaccine offering was ignored for more than two months by the authorities, even as the pandemic worsened in the country. At a tense hearing, Wajngarten testified before a Senate committee investigating possible omissions in the management of Jair Bolsonaro’s government in the face of a pandemic that has already killed more than 425,000 Brazilians and which the opposition considers sharpened by the denialist stances of the representative and the far-right leader. The former official, responsible for the Government’s communication between April 2019 and March this year, fell into contradictions and was elusive of many of the questions of opposition senators, especially regarding Pfizer and official pandemic information campaigns. However, under pressure and even threats of arrest, which is one of the commission’s prerogatives in case of refusals to testify, Wajngarten admitted that it learned last November that the Pfizer laboratory had submitted an offer of the vaccine it was developing two months earlier. That offer was directed directly to Bolsonaro and several of his ministers in September and Wajngarten said he was known two months later through the “owner of a media outlet.” He further admitted that until then “there had been no response” from the Government, even though Pfizer called for “speed” because of high global demand. He explained that he then made “personal” arrangements with Pfizer and that the purchase of vaccines from pfizer was only possible as soon as March this year, after Parliament authorized the signing of the contract, even with clauses it described as “leonines”. Wajngarten failed to explain why the government ignored Pfizer’s offer at first, but guaranteed that Bolsonaro, despite his anti-immunization speech, “said it would buy all vaccines once certified” by the country’s regulatory agency and that “this was done.” He also denied that, as he appeared in an interview he gave to Veja magazine, he said that the management of the government with Pfizer was “incompetent”. However, the magazine disclosed the audio while the hearing was being held and beted Wanjgarten, who then could not justify its contradictions. The former official also avoided commenting on Bolsonaro’s statements about vaccines, especially Pfizer’s, from which the representative said they could turn people into “Yacarés”, and denied that such a position to be a “communication strategy”. According to Wajngarten, Bolsonaro’s position, as the “maximum leader of the nation,” has an “impact” on the population, but so do the official pandemic information campaigns that were made by the Government on the need for precautionary measures against the virus. However, he was not able to explain the information that his own firm disclosed in favor of remedies of dubious effectiveness against covid-19 or urging the population to return to work even though governors and mayors promoted restrictions on economic activity, always censored by Bolsonaro.” The president always cared about health and the economy,” he merely tested.

Original source in Spanish