Brazil’s drug watchdog Anvisa has granted definitive registration to a new vaccine against COVID-19, named Zalika. The jab is manufactured by India’s Serum Institute and the application for registration was made by the Brazilian company Zalika Farmacêutica.
In a statement, the authority reported the vaccine showed efficacy in the phase-3 study, the last stage before approval, with a variation between 79.5 percent (in a study conducted in the US in people aged 12–17) and 90.4 percent, in a study in the US and Mexico carried out with adults.
Zalika is the sixth vaccine to obtain definitive individual registration. In addition to the six existing ones, Butantan’s CoronaVac is also legal in Brazil, albeit for emergency use.
The vaccine is described as monovalent for the original SarsCov-2 virus and is not yet capable of immunizing against the XBB 1. 5 variant, according to existing advice from the World Health Organization, so it will be updated this year. to meet a deadline signed through Anvisa and the pharmaceutical company.
To be included in the federal government’s national vaccination plan, Zalika will still want to be evaluated through the Ministry of Health.
Since 2009, researchers at Brazil’s Butantan Institute have been studying the production of a new dengue vaccine. The inoculation is lately in its final phase of clinical trials.
During a meeting at the headquarters of the Pan American Health Organization in Brasília, the minister called for mobilization by states and municipalities countrywide.
About six million doses are available, enough to vaccinate 3 million people, with the full vaccination schedule being two doses.
According to the Inter-Union Directorate of Statistics and Socio-Economic Studies (Dieese), the increase in the minimum wage will benefit 59. 3 million workers.
The Selic rate is the central bank’s main tool to keep official inflation under control, measured through the national customer value index.
Data from the Ministry of Health show an occurrence rate of 107. 1 cases per 100,000 inhabitants and a mortality rate of 0. 9 percent. Minas Gerais is at the top of the list of reported cases.
Brazil has priorities such as developing industrial policies similar to sustainable environmental progress and strengthening women’s participation in foreign industry.
Average percentage issuances decreased compared to 2022, to 9. 6%, confirming the trend of recovery of the post-pandemic labor market in 2022.
Positive employment expansion was observed in all 27 Brazilian states, with notable increases in São Paulo (390,719 jobs), Rio de Janeiro (160,570) and Minas Gerais (140,836).
UNICEF reported that 56 percent of those young people were literate at the prescribed age, adding to the thousands of other women and children enrolled in Brazilian schools without literacy skills.