An audit by the Federal Court of Auditors concluded that the Ministry of Health’s delay in completing the contracting process led to the loss of at least R$260 million in Coronavac vaccines, purchased in 2023, in a contract worth R$330 million.
According to the TCU, of the approximately 2 million doses signed in the contract, only 260 thousand were applied, resulting in a loss of up to 97% of the input.
The document points out that, after a delay of more than seven months in negotiation, the batches were delivered with a short validity period and at a time when the immunizer was out of use in the Unified Health System.
According to the report, at least 8 million of the 10 million doses purchased did not leave the folder’s warehouse and were incinerated because they had passed their expiration date.
In a note, the Ministry of Health stated that it found a scenario of “complete abandonment of stocks” left by the management of former president Jair Bolsonaro and that it began purchasing the vaccine in the first quarter of 2023, shortly after President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) took office.
The ministry also states that it acted to guarantee the supply of vaccines to the population, even facing an uncertain scenario regarding adaptation to new variants and the possible ineffectiveness of the input.
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Despite the irregularities found in the investigation, the TCU assessed that there is no evidence of the direct involvement of the then Minister of Health, Nísia Trindade, in the delay in receipt. However, the document states that there was a delay in the process and a failure in the coordination of hiring.
Documents obtained by TCU confirm that the Butantan Institute officially warned the department twice about the impact of the delay in finalizing the contract on batches already produced. For the TCU, the department also assumed the risk of loss by exempting the institute from the obligation to replace bottles with an expiration date shorter than that required in the contract.
