Since the trial design was submitted to Canada - they needed Canadian ethics approval before beginning, regardless of where the test sites will be (much like the last US trial recruited at many non-US sites).

I just looked on the Worldometers website and it indicates that there are 294,030 actice Covid cases in Brazil at this time, with 8,318 serious or critical cases,  versus CD with 40,887 active cases with 776 serious or critical.

Hopefully they get this off the ground quickly and get moving in Brazil.