Last Sunday (11), with an official ceremony at the Cultural Foundation of Serrana, vaccination against Covid-19 of the population that is part of Project S, a clinical study by Butantan on the impact of immunization on the containment of the pandemic, ended with an official ceremony at the Serrana Cultural Foundation. With the end of the application of the second dose of the vaccine, the immunization of the population of Serrana reached 27,150 people, which indicates a vaccine coverage of 97.9%.
“We are closing this very important stage in order to obtain the necessary responses to the pandemic with the Butantan vaccine,” said Gilberto de Pádua, advisor to the Board of Directors of the Butantan Institute. “If I could summarize the project in one word, it would be intensity. Everything about Project S was very intense: planning, development, number of participants, relationships, workload”, said Dr. Marcos Borges, director of the State Hospital of Serrana and principal investigator of the research (PI, in the acronym in English).
This Sunday’s vaccination ended an eight-week cycle of immunization for the population of Serrana, which started on 2/17. The municipality was divided into four groups, and each week one of the groups was vaccinated – for the first four weeks, with the first dose of the vaccine; for the next four weeks, with the second dose. The result was 6,600 people from the Green Group vaccinated, 94.2% of volunteers registered in the region; 6,370 residents of the Yellow Group, 94.8% of those registered; 5,928 people from the Gray Group, 93.8% of those registered; and 8,202 residents of Grupo Azul, 99.2% of those registered.
54,872 doses of CoronaVac were applied and 46 serious adverse events were recorded. During the period, there were six deaths by Covid-19: five people died after taking only the first dose, and one person died after taking the second dose (the symptoms started to manifest two days after the application, which indicates that the patient has already was infected when he took the second dose). Among the unvaccinated people, there were 14 deaths from Covid-19.
The director of clinical studies at Butantan, Ricardo Palacios, highlighted the acceptability number of the vaccine, which was 97.7% – an expressive indicator, since CoronaVac was the victim of misleading information and unfounded criticisms, including from authorities, solely for be the result of cooperation with the Chinese pharmaceutical company Sinovac.
“This number was reached through work that makes Serrana an example. Here, the voice of science and the authorities, both of the State and the municipality, was unified with the health entities, and everyone says the same thing: it is important that people get vaccines”, summarized the researcher. For Palacios, the fact that Serrana accepted the vaccine indicates that the population has appropriated Project S.
Residents will continue to be followed for another year, both vaccinated and unvaccinated, especially with regard to surveillance of hospitalization and death cases. The expectation is that the first responses related to the clinical study will begin to be obtained in May, when the period of two weeks after the application of the second dose necessary for the immune system to generate antibodies ends.
