The study involves the city of Serrana, in the southeastern state of Sao Paulo, the research institute said
“The entire adult population, an estimated 30,000 people, will be immunized within three months, in unprecedented action,” the Butantan Institute wrote via Twitter on Wednesday.
The idea of vaccinating the greatest number of people allows researchers to ‘follow the evolution of the epidemic. It has technical aspects that make it possible to make calculations, make projections and calculate whether the vaccine is able to reduce the transmission of the virus. said Dimas Tadeu Covas, the institute’s director.
The town of Serrana, with a population of approximately 45,000, is divided into four color-coded regions. According to the Butantan Institute, all people over the age of 18 are given a Coronavac vaccine, with the exception of pregnant or breastfeeding women and those with serious illnesses.
“Based on what we’re going to learn here, we can tell the rest of the world what the true effect of the vaccination against Covid-19 is,” said Ricardo Palacios, director of clinical studies at Butantan.
There are rays of light, said Pan American Health Organization director Dr. Carissa Etienne, Wednesday. “After many weeks of increases in Covid cases and deaths, we are starting to see improving trends in some of the hardest hit countries, including the US and Brazil,” she said during a weekly online briefing.
However, she warned that those trends are “cause for hope, but not for celebration.”