Thread by @TelGlobalHealth

💉This sleepy town in Brazil is running a huge coronavirus vaccine experiment

The aim is to track the real-world impact of jabs, as scientists work to understand how effective Covid vaccines are at halting transmission

@djknowles22 explains the science behind the methodology⬇️

🇧🇷As the pandemic hits new heights in Brazil and its vaccination drive stutters, Serrana's residents can barely believe their luck: every adult has been offered at least one dose of a Covid-19 shot

@sneweyy reports:
telegraph.co.uk/global-health/…

🗺️Serrana – a hard-hit commuter town in São Paulo state home to some 45,000 people – was chosen last autumn to host ‘Project S’

The study, which is the first of its kind, aims to answer looming questions about the real-world impacts of coronavirus jabs

📌By vaccinating the entire city in stages researchers hope to track whether someone who is inoculated can still transmit the virus, and how quickly vaccines contain the pandemic

🧪 The study is testing CoronaVac, a jab developed by the Chinese company Sinovac and manufactured by the Butantan Institute

The jab, alongside the AstraZeneca vaccine, has become a mainstay of Brazil’s faltering vaccination campaign

🩺 Clinical trials in Turkey and Brazil suggest the CoronaVac jab prevents 100% of hospitalisations and deaths, but it halts only 50% of infections

🔐The study was organised in secret to prevent a mass influx of people to the town (though this hasn’t stopped a surge in inquiries to estate agents in the last six weeks)

The results are yet to be published. But with Brazil’s coronavirus outbreak growing worse by the day, all eyes are now on Serrana

@sneweyy
telegraph.co.uk/global-health/…