Chile got more doses from China and will vaccinate people between 35 and 45

Chile acquired four million additional doses Chinese Sinovac vaccine and start vaccinating people aged 35 to 45 the following two weeks before the constituent elections, reported President Sebastián Piñera.

The president said that three million will arrive in May, half of this batch on Sunday, which will total 17.2 million doses of this drug received by the South American country in the first half of 2021.

In addition to these 17.2 million, nearly 2.6 million doses of the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine and 158,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine have already been received via the international COVAX mechanism.

In addition, the vaccination schedule will be advanced and next week everyone between 45 and 40 can be vaccinated, and the population between 39 and 35 years old the following week, before the elections of the Constituent Convention to prepare a new fundamental letter, of mayors, councilors and governors, scheduled for May 15 and 16.

Authorities expect seven million people to receive two doses of the vaccine by that date.

According to the latest figures proposed by the authorities, nearly 8.1 million people (52.9% of the vaccinated population) they received one dose and nearly 6.7 million received two doses (44% of the population).

These numbers place Chile as the second country with the highest percentage of fully vaccinated population in the world, only behind Israel, according to the authorities.

Chile overtook this Sunday the 26,500 deaths due to covid-19 after adding 104 deaths in the past 24 hours, in addition to adding 6,122 newly infected, the total balance of infections to more than 1.2 million since the start of the health crisis.

In total, the number of deaths is 26,561 and the national positivity rate – number of infections per 100 PCR tests – in the last 24 hours was 8.5% after performing more than 66,000 tests, have reported health authorities.

In recent weeks, cases had topped all-time highs, above 9,000, but for a week, they stabilized around 6,000, an advance that led the authorities to deconfin a dozen capitals this week.

Since mid-March, the country has been plunged into a second wave of the pandemic which has put the health system on the ropes and forced to close borders and confine more than 90% of the population for weeks.

Despite the stabilization of infections, the saturation of intensive care units remains for weeks above 95% and in the last 24 hours, the number of critical patients was 3,318, which means that there are only about 250 free beds available in units of this type.

The country has been in a state of emergency due to a disaster for more than a year, has kept borders closed since April and the curfew applies from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m.

Source: AP and EFE

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