Entire Brazilian city to be vaccinated in study

Brazil is arguably the country that seems to contain the most contradictions when it comes to COVID-19 and vaccinations.

On the one hand, President Jair Bolsonaro has consistently played down the impact of the coronavirus, saying it is nothing but a "small flu." He recently made a connection between the COVID-19 vaccine and AIDS in a live broadcast. Facebook removed the video on the grounds that it violated its policies regarding the vaccine. 

On the other hand, in the wake of more than 600,000 COVID-19 related deaths, the population desperately wants to be vaccinated. A recent survey by the Datafolha polling institute found that 93% were in favor of getting the shots.

It's here that the pharmaceuticals giant Pfizer launched a long-term experiment for a year to monitor the transmission of the virus in a "real-life scenario." The idea was to inoculate all the inhabitants of the southern city of Toledo with the BioNTech-Pfizer vaccine and to observe what happened.

 "We have already vaccinated 99% of the inhabitants aged over 12, and 65% have already received their second shot, plus booster shots," said Toledo Mayor Beto Lunitti. "The population, which has followed distancing rules very strictly from the start and has been wearing masks, reacted very positively to this study."

"Now the whole world is watching us," he said with a laugh.

'We believe in science'

Lunitti himself contracted COVID-19 at the end of March and had to be administered supplementary oxygen. He posted his diagnosis online as a warning to the population not to take the pandemic lightly.

"We believe in science in Toledo and since I am responsible for almost 150,000 people, I have to set a particular example with my behavior," he said. "By contrast our president is not an example, despite the seriousness of this problem."

Toledo, an agricultural town in the state of Parana, offers a great advantage to researchers. It's not too big and not too small. It has a university, a hospital and local health authorities who are involved in the study, and there is little resistance to the vaccine in the general population.

It also beat out a number of contenders to host the research project, said a proud Lunitti. "We got the highest score of 100 from the regulatory authorities, for complying with all the vaccination plans, federal, state and municipal."

Children getting jabs as well

Gabriela Kucharski has been the municipal health secretary in Toledo since January.

"Because of the progress in the vaccination rollout, infections as well as hospitalizations and deaths have decreased significantly in the last two months," said Kucharski. "There are currently six patients in intensive care, and we are recording two deaths per week."

At the moment, the vaccination campaign for children over 12 is in full swing. The infections in the age group 12 to 19 have dwindled from 49 to seven within a month, said Kucharski, a pediatrician.

At the beginning of the vaccine rollout in Toledo, inhabitants received the Sinovac, AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines. But, now everybody is getting BioNTech-Pfizer.

"With this study of a population that is 100% vaccinated, we will get real-time results with regard to hospitalizations, deaths and particularly variants," said Kucharski. "We want to understand how the virus behaves in an immunized city — how long the protection lasts, for example."

Distancing rules and mandatory face masks will remain in place for the time being.

Duplicating 'Project S'

To some extent, the experiment in Toledo is a repeat of the "Project S" experiment that took place at the beginning of the year in Serrana, about 900 kilometers (560 miles) to the northeast, not far from Sao Paolo. However, there were two major differences: In Serrana, population 45,000, only the adults received the vaccine, and only the Chinese CoronaVac jab was administered.

The director of the state hospital of Serrana, Marcos Borges, said the results were encouraging: "The number of symptomatic COVID-19 cases fell by 80%, of hospitalizations by 86% and of deaths by 95%."

He added that the research findings also showed the impact of the vaccine on those who were not vaccinated, such as inhabitants under the age of 18. "The number of new cases among the unvaccinated has fallen considerably. We have seen a clear drop in the circulation of the virus," he said.

In the end, the biggest challenge for Toledo over the next 12 months might not even be the monitoring, surveillance and tracking of the virus in the city itself but preventing it from arriving from the outside. In Serrana, access roads were strictly controlled with visitors having to register and only being allowed to remain in the city for a limited amount of time.

Toledo needs to be watchful: the number of new daily cases in Brazil is currently at 13,424, and rising.

This article has been translated from German.