The successful vaccination campaign that the world applauds: Chile has already applied more than 5 million doses against COVID-19 in record time

The Minister of Health of Chile, Enrique Paris, announced that the government of his country had succeeded in vaccinating 5,424,393 people against COVID-19, since the start of the campaign and from this number, about half of the second dose has already been applied. The vaccination campaign in the Andean country is by far the best in Latin America and its success dazzles the world.

“We have 5,424,393 people vaccinated. In addition, 2,692,923 completed their two doses, or 49.6% of the five million people defined as the target population., which are the priority groups defined in our vaccination schedule. The process continues to advance according to the established schedule, ”assured the Minister.

South American country has become Latin American champion of COVID-19 vaccination and it is among the top five countries in the world to conduct immunization against the virus.

Paris, pointed out that despite the success of the vaccination process, cases continue to increase, hoping that the situation can improve in mid-April.

Much of the Chilean capital and several municipalities across the country will return to full quarantine from this Saturday, given the sharp increase in coronavirus cases in the country, as the vaccination process advances which reaches more than 5 , 3 million people with at least one dose.

A large part of the Chilean capital and several municipalities in the country will return to total quarantine from this Saturday

The municipality of Santiago – where the civic center, Palacio de La Moneda, shops, offices and residential areas are located – will enter quarantine seven months after leaving the last total containment decreed after the arrival of the pandemic on the 16th. August 2020..

However, since the start of its mass vaccination campaign in February, Chile has vaccinated more than 36% of its population and is only behind Israel, the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom in the world, according to the One World Data registry from the University of Oxford.. And this nation of 18 million people aims to vaccinate 80% of its population by the end of June.

The coronavirus vaccination process even reached Chilean Antarctica, where members of the armed forces, the Antarctic Institute (Inach) and the Directorate General of Civil Aeronautics were deployed to the site and received the first dose.

“At the base of Frei, there is a health post with a doctor and a nurse, who were in charge of the vaccination”, said to Efe Member Inach Daniel Ramírez, head of the scientific base Professor Julio Escudero.

Chile has managed to exceed the 5 million vaccinated, 15 days before those initially planned in the vaccination plan. This figure includes the entire at-risk population, adults over 70, health workers, teachers and members of the security forces.

The government’s next goal is to vaccinate the rest of the “target population” by June.

The Minister of Health reported that on Monday more than 2.7 million people over the age of 60 have been vaccinated, representing around 85% of this age group.

“We have achieved our goal (…) which has undoubtedly been a very difficult job and which represented the contribution of hundreds of thousands of people,” said Chilean President Sebastián Piñera.

The next goal set by the government, which has guaranteed 35 million doses from different laboratories and the Covax platform of the World Health Organization (WHO), consists of vaccinating the rest of the target population (about 13 million people out of a total population of 18 million) before June.

Chile is also the fastest vaccinating country in the world, with 1.4 daily doses per 100 inhabitants., still according to Our World in Data from the University of Oxford

The pre-negotiation of vaccines, as well as the extensive primary care network are two of the key factors that have accelerated vaccination.

“Believe me, ensuring immunization for all Chileans has been an extremely difficult and challenging task, but we got it done”, Piñera acknowledged, who announced that new shipments with 4 million more vaccines will arrive in the coming days and that inoculation of the population between 50 and 59 years old will begin on March 24.

Officials and experts say the explanation for Chile’s success lies in early and simultaneous negotiations with several pharmaceutical companies, previous contacts with some companies and a strong vaccination system that covers the entire 4,000 kilometers of its territory.

It is still too early for those vaccinated to influence epidemiological markers in a country which is experiencing a strong rebound in infections with an average of 5,000 new cases per day and great pressure on the hospital system.

COVID-19 patients occupy 95% of the 3,200 critical-use beds available nationwide, so elective surgeries will be suspended from Friday in 12 of Chile’s 16 regions.

“The heart of Chile’s vaccination program and vaccine research strategy has been precisely this pragmatism, this flexibility”he said to AP. They have always looked, he added, “for different alternatives and not to put all the eggs in one basket”.

In June, well ahead of any Latin American country, Chile had already signed a contract with Sinovac, which promised to make preferential deliveries once the vaccine was authorized.

Currently, Chile bought just over 35 million doses. So far Sinovac has pledged 14 million doses, Pfizer 10.1 million and AstraZeneca four million., in addition to the government acquired 7.8 million more through the international Covax mechanism, which aims for equitable access to vaccines worldwide. For the moment, the authorities have invested 200 million dollars and estimate to inject 100 million more.

Chile has also stood in solidarity with other countries in the region, last week it donated 20,000 doses of Sinovac to Paraguay and the same number to Ecuador., for use by healthcare workers.

No Latin American country has successfully vaccinated as many people as Chile. Far behind Brazil, with 4% of its population and Argentina, with around 3%.

The country received just over 21,000 doses of Pfizer in December, less than promised, and began immunizing health workers. But in January he got the first four million shots from Sinovac, and then he ramped things up.

Mass vaccination began on February 3 and since then Chile has vaccinated more than 100,000 people almost daily, although this week it hit a record 415,000 people vaccinated in a single day.

“Chile’s primary health care system is the most important in Latin America” and, during the vaccination process, “it has demonstrated its absolute strength”, said to AP Dr Mercedes López Nitsche, Director of the Immunology Program, University of Chile Faculty of Medicine and the National Millennium Core Program of Immunology and Immunotherapy.

This is not the first time that Chile has shown the strength of its vaccination system: between March and April 2020, as the virus spread around the world, the country vaccinated eight million people against the flu.

The Deputy Director of the Pan American Health Organization, Jarbas Barbosa, attributed the Chilean success to the fact that “it is a high income country” because it had “good planning and used the resources at its disposal intelligently to make bilateral agreements with certain producers”.

Mario Patiño, 75, an employee of a travel agency, was one of those who received the first dose of Sinovac in February in Lo Padro, a poor town on the outskirts of Santiago.

“Everything was perfect, everything was fast, excellent care, well organized,” said the man, who was due to receive his second dose this weekend. For him, he added, receiving the vaccine means “to be calmer”.

Since the first case detected in the country, on March 3, 2020, Chile has already added 911,469 infections and 21,988 deaths from COVID-19.

(With information from the AP, EFE and AFP)

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