Another 1 million doses of CoronaVac, a vaccine against COVID-19 devised by Sinovac Biotech Ltd of China, have reached Brazil, Chinese Ambassador to Brazil Yang Wangming says.

The shipment of vaccine arrived on Tuesday and was delivered to the Instituto Butantan, a state-owned biomedical research institute in the southern Brazilian state of São Paulo, Mr Yang says in a social media post.

Instituto Butantan has now received 7 million doses of CoronaVac, he says.

In a separate social media post, Instituto Butantan says the federal health ministry will use the doses for the Brazilian national inoculation programme.

Instituto Butantan says Sinovac Vice-president Meng Weining inspected last week the factory where the institute will start making CoronaVac next year.

Instituto Butantan has supplied the health ministry with 52.2 million doses of CoronaVac since January, the institute says in its post.