Pfizer planning to vaccinate Brazil city in study | TheHill - The Hill

Pfizer announced a plan to fully vaccinate an entire Brazilian city to study the long-term effects and safety of its COVID-19 vaccine in a "real-life scenario."

The one-year study will simulate a situation in which everyone aged 12 and older is fully vaccinated with the Pfizer-BioNTech serum. It will closely monitor how long vaccine effectiveness lasts and how it works against new variants, according to The New York Times.

The study will take place in the Brazilian city of Toledo, where 98 percent of the population is vaccinated. It will be conducted by a hospital, a university, local health officials and Brazil’s national vaccination program, the Times reported.

"Here we believe in science and we lament the almost 600,000 deaths from Covid-19 in Brazil," Toledo Mayor Beto Lunitti said when the study was announced, per the Times.

Another Brazilian town called Serrana is believed to be the site of the first mass COVID-19 vaccine trial. That trial successfully lowered new cases, hospitalizations and deaths in the town of 45,000 people.

Brazil in its entirety, however, has suffered a particularly high death toll, while its president, Jair Bolsonaro, has publicly questioned COVID-19 vaccinations and other public health measures.

After the U.S., Brazil was only the second country to surpass 600,000 deaths.

The Hill has reached out to Pfizer for more information.

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