18-year-old who had no pre-existing illness died from Covid-19

After spending more than a month in intensive care at Gustavo Fricke Hospital in Viña del Mar, Chile, a young man from 18 years who suffered from severe complications from the coronavirus. He had no pre-existing illness or serious medical history.

Luis Venegas He was the son of a couple of nursing technicians and had suffered from pneumonia as a result of Covid-19. The family do not know how the young man got infected, but he was never able to get out of the serious situation that affected him.

Venegas remained intubated with an artificial respirator and with Ecmo, an extracorporeal machine to oxygenate his blood. However, this was not enough to improve his health.

His father, José Venegas, feared that due to the time spent in the same condition, the medical staff at the hospital would decide to disconnect him from the equipment that was keeping him alive.

From the hospital, through a press release, they indicated that “this outcome occurred despite the efforts of the health team and the technological and clinical means made available to the patient, due to respiratory failure in accordance with his diagnosis.

His parents, informed at all times of the evolution of their son’s clinical picture, were with him at the time of death.

As in other countries, Chile is suffering from a new wave of coronavirus, in particular “carried” by young people, who become infected and end up hospitalized in serious condition.

The controversial Sinovac

Chilean authorities have defended the country’s use of the Chinese-made coronavirus vaccine Sinovac after a senior official in the Asian country appeared to echo doubts over its effectiveness.

Gao Fu, director of the China Center for Disease Control and Prevention, told a conference that the country is officially evaluating the mix of Covid-19 vaccines as currently available vaccines. “They don’t have very high protection rates.”

He later said in an interview with state media that his comments were “completely misunderstood”.

Available data shows that Chinese vaccines are worse than others, including Pfizer and Moderna in terms of efficacy, but require less stringent temperature controls during storage.

The vaccine developed by Sinovac was found to be just over 50% effective in reducing infection in Brazilian clinical trials. A real-world study of vaccination and contagion data from the University of Chile suggested a few days ago that the vaccine was 54% effective in reducing infection.