Chile anticipates mass vaccination against coronavirus, after arrival of doses

Chile will begin the process of mass vaccination against the coronavirus this Thursday, informed President Sebastián Piñera, after confirming the arrival in the country of the first 10,000 doses of that developed by the American-German pharmaceutical duo Pfizer / BioNTech.

“Today, we want to share good news with our compatriots, because this morning, the plane which brings the first doses of vaccine to our country took off from Belgium, and will arrive in Chile tomorrow morning”, declared the president during of a press conference at the Moneda Palace, seat of government.

Piñera stressed that the vaccination process will begin immediately, prioritizing health officials and medical staff working in intensive care units.

He also announced that the next vaccine shipment will arrive next week with 10,000 additional doses, and will therefore continue to arrive gradually until the contract guaranteeing more than 10 million vaccines from the same US laboratory is fulfilled, Sputnik news agency reported.

Chile has vaccine purchase contracts with Pfizer / BioNTech, Sinovac, Johnson and Johnson, AstraZeneca and with the multilateral Covax initiative, guaranteeing at least 30 million doses.

The government’s plan is to vaccinate 5 million people in the first quarter of 2021, prioritizing health officials, the elderly and the chronically ill, and in the first half of next year it plans to do vaccinate 15 million inhabitants.

Chile has reported 589,189 cases since the start of the pandemic, of which 16,217 have died.