Brazil's government will offer COVID-19 vaccines to all Brazilians free of charge once health regulator Anvisa gives it scientific and legal approval, President Jair Bolsonaro said on Monday.

In a post on his Twitter account, Bolsonaro also said the economy ministry has assured him that there will be no shortage of resources to administer a vaccine to everyone who wants one.

"Once certified by @anvisa_oficial (scientific guidelines and legal precepts), @govbr will offer the vaccine to all, free of charge and not mandatory," Bolsonaro tweeted.

Bolsonaro's tweet came shortly before the president of Sao Paulo's Butantan Institute biomedical center, Dimas Covas, said all necessary data for the CoronaVac vaccine developed by China's Sinovac Biotech Ltd has been or will soon be sent to health regulator Anvisa.

He expects Anvisa to approve it, regardless of the political storm between Bolsonaro and Sao Paulo Governor Joao Doria over competing vaccines.

"I want to think that no political problem is bigger than people's lives," Covas said in an interview with GloboNews.

Doria said earlier on Monday that the country's most populous state plans to start vaccinating its population against COVID-19 on January 25. The federal government expects to roll out its own immunization plan at least a month later.

Brazil has the world's third highest COVID-19 case count at more than 6.6 million, and the second heaviest death toll of more than 177,000.

(With input from Reuters, Xinhua)