CAJICA, Colombia – Brazil’s health care surveillance agency, Anvisa, granted the first two emergency approvals for COVID-19 vaccines on Sunday, Jan. 17, giving the green light to Sinovac Biotech Ltd.’s Coronavac and to Covishield, developed by Astrazeneca plc and the University of Oxford.

Brazilian health care regulator Anvisa has issued guidelines for SARS-CoV-2 vaccine manufacturers to receive emergency marketing approvals in the Latin American giant. Brazil is the largest market in the region and several COVID-19 vaccine makers are both doing trials there and hoping for quick approvals.

CAJICA, Colombia – Chembio Diagnostic Systems Inc., a point-of-care diagnostic company focused on infectious diseases, received the approval from Anvisa, the Brazilian health care surveillance agency, to distribute its tests in the Latin American market. The approval adds yet another test to the hundreds already approved in Brazil, where the market for such tests is quickly getting crowded sending prices down. Brazil is one of the countries most affected by COVID-19 with almost 6 million cases and 166,000 deaths, the third highest number of cases in the world.

CAJICA, Colombia – In a move to reduce bureaucratic procedures and fight backlogs, the Brazilian health care surveillance agency, Anvisa, softened its rules for the marketing authorization of class II medical devices in the Latin American country.

PARIS – The Cour des comptes, supreme body for auditing the use of public funds in France, independent from government and parliament, has just released its report on the operation of the French National Agency for the Safety of Medicines and Health Products (ANSM). Following 10 months of administrative and financial investigation, these financial controllers have highlighted the weakness of controls applied to medical devices placed on the market in France.