Rio de Janeiro mayor says hundreds of vaccines okay after power outage

RIO DE JANEIRO, Feb 2 (Reuters) - Rio de Janeiro will be able to use hundreds of coronavirus vaccines that the city initially feared would need to be thrown out after a power outage left them stored at an inappropriate temperature, the mayor's office said on Tuesday.

Last week, city officials told Reuters that up to 720 doses of the CoronaVac vaccine developed by China's Sinovac Biotech Ltd might need to be ditched due to the outage at a federal hospital in the city's Bonsucesso neighborhood.

However, an analysis released on Tuesday by biomedical center Fiocruz determined that the vaccines had not been compromised by the event. The office of Rio's Mayor also declared the shots safe to use, citing the Fiocruz report.

Fiocruz "analyzed the event reports and the technical information from the vaccine's manufacturer and considers the use of the vaccines in question to be safe," the Rio-based center said in a statement.

Still, the center added, the vaccines should be used within 14 days.

So far, according to official data, the city of 6.7 million people has received 135,000 doses of CoronaVac. (Reporting by Rodrigo Viga Gaier; Writing by Gram Slattery; Editing by David Gregorio)