Concerned with the aggravated pandemic in Brazil, in early June of 2021, BayBrazil reached out to local tech leaders in our hub to sign letters to several U.S. Government officials requesting vaccine donations to the population of Brazil.
37 members in our community signed the letters (leaders of San Francisco Bay Area companies and our entire Board)
Below it’s a copy of one of the letters and responses.
San Francisco, June 7th, 2021
Mr. Juan Sebastian Gonzalez
Special Assistant to the President and NSC Senior Director for the Western Hemisphere at the White House
Dear Mr. Gonzalez,
We write to request your assistance regarding Covid-19 vaccine access for the population of Brazil.
Every day, members of our Brazilian-American innovation community (entrepreneurs, engineers, academics, tech professionals) receive news that a relative or a friend in Brazil has been hospitalized or has died due to Covid-19.
This week, confirmed coronavirus cases surpassed 16 million. So far, the pandemic has taken the lives of over 473,000 Brazilians, according to data from the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University.
While significant progress has been made in the U.S. in vaccinating the population, in Brazil the pace of vaccination has slowed due to the shortage of active pharmaceutical ingredients from China.
As a result, the only two vaccine production institutions, Fiocruz and Instituto Butantan, were forced to pause production and, according to the Brazilian Health Ministry, only 10% of the population has received the required two vaccine shots.
Consequently, dear family members, friends, professionals who work in critical sectors of the economy, and common citizens, adult and young, remain at risk in the face of a severe vaccine shortage.
Therefore, we request your support and effort to assist in increasing the vaccination rate among our fellow Brazilians by facilitating access to any U.S. Covid-19 vaccine surplus by Brazil as the demand in the U.S. slows down.
We greatly appreciate your consideration of the allocation of Covid-19 vaccines to Brazil, and would be pleased to discuss this issue in greater detail at your convenience.
Sincerely,
Margarise Correa
Founder & CEO, BayBrazil
(along with other 36 supporters)
One of the responses came on July 20
Andrew Sanders, Director for Brazil and the Southern Cone, National Security Council, emphasized the NSC
“Commitment to support Brazil and the broader region to recover from the pandemic. On June 24, the United States delivered 3 million doses of Johnson and Johnson vaccines to Brazil. As the President has stated, these first donations are only a down payment on our broader commitment to helping the world end this pandemic.”
