Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro has decided on Wednesday to cancel the purchase of Coronavac, a COVID-19 vaccine in phase-3 clinical trials by Chinese firm Sinovac.

A day before, on Tuesday, Health Minister Eduardo Pazuello had confirmed that Brazil would buy the vaccine developed by Sinovac to include it in the immunization program, in addition to one developed by the UK-based AstraZeneca and Oxford University.

Bolsonaro said on social media, For sure, we will not buy the Chinese vaccine, because it is unjustifiable to pay billions for a vaccine that has not been through its testing phase. He also said that it would be a betrayal to buy Chinese vaccine.

The President also said that he would not allow the Brazilan people to be anyone’s ‘guinea pig’. Both Brazil President and Health Minister have been infected by a novel coronavirus.

Brazil has been among the world’s hardest-hit nations by the pandemic, with more than 5 million infections and more than 150,000 COVID-19 deaths. Earlier, Bangladesh had rejected co-financing of the phase 3 trial of the Sinovac made Corona vaccine.

back at home, India trend of steadily decreasing active cases continues unabated. The Active Cases have been sustained below 10% of the total cases for the last three days suggesting only 1 in 10 cases are active COVID19 patients across the country. Presently the active cases comprise merely 9.29% of the total positive cases of the country standing at 7,15,812. Registering another milestone, the daily Positivity Rate has also been maintained to less than 5% over the past three days. Yesterday, the daily Positivity Rate is reported to be 3.8%. The decrease in the daily positivity rate is simultaneously mapped by the falling active cases, which continue to be under 7.5L today (7,15,812).

The total recovered cases are close to 69 lakhs (68,74,518). The difference between active cases and recovered cases is consistently increasing and stands at 61,58,706 today.79,415 patients have recovered and discharged in the last 24 hours whereas the new confirmed cases are 55,839. The national Recovery Rate has progressed to 89.20%.81% of the new recovered cases are observed to be concentrated in 10 States/UTs.Maharashtra has contributed more than 23,000 to the single-day recovery.55,839 new confirmed cases were recorded during the last 24 hours.78% of these are from 10 States and UTs. Maharashtra and Kerala are still reporting a very high number of new cases with more than 8,000 cases each followed by Karnataka with more than 5,000 cases.702 case fatalities have been reported in the past 24 hours. Of these, nearly 82% are concentrated in ten States/UTs.More than 25% of new fatalities reported are from Maharashtra (180 deaths)