Chile approves third covid vaccine, launches nationwide mass vaccination: what’s the plan

With the arrival this Thursday of 2 million doses of the Chinese vaccine against the Sinovac coronavirus, and the brand new authorization of AstraZeneca’s drug (which promises more than 6 million doses since April) Chile launches the mass vaccination across the country from next week, to fight the covid pandemic.

The expert committee of the Institute of Public Health (ISP) on Wednesday approved, unanimously, the emergency use of the vaccine against Covid-19 developed by the AstraZeneca laboratory in collaboration with the University of Oxford . With this step, Chile has three emergency injections to fight against the Sars-CoV-2 virus. The British company is joined by Pfizer BioNTech and Sinovac, La Tercera newspaper reported on Friday.

According to the newspaper, the Chilean government has committed 6,650,000 doses of AstraZeneca. Of these, four million will arrive via direct contract in April and the remaining 2.6 million doses, via the mechanism Covax from the World Health Organization, on a date that has not yet been confirmed.

How is the vaccination plan

Chile launched the plan “I am getting vaccinated” which begins the week of February 1 with health personnel, residents in retirement homes and people aged 90 or over to 85 years.

The vaccines will be applied in hospitals, clinics, private and public vaccinations and in specially affected institutions.

From the second week of February, the list of people to be vaccinated is extended to people between 84 and 71 years old, who will receive their doses in private and public vaccinations.

But in addition, they can also be vaccinated in the same week:

• Essential staff functions draw attention to citizens

• Staff of the Forces of order and security, Armed forces deployed in the action plan against the coronavirus

• Staff performing critical government functions

All this sector must present documents proving its activity and can receive the vaccine.

“immediately after, we will continue with the elderly between 65 and 80 years old and, also, with those people who have chronic diseases“, the government said in a statement.

The reason is very simple, he added, “the elderly tend to get sicker, to fall more seriously ill, to compromise the infrastructure of the intensive care units and, in addition, to have a rate. higher mortality. We were the first. “

What follows will be education workers and basic service personnel who “are indispensable to Chilean families”. Then they will continue with the general population in descending order of age.

The dates will be communicated in the coming days.

Specifically, the vaccine will be applied to people from 18 years old.

Sinovac vaccine

In a statement to inform the population about the vaccine to be applied in this first stage, that of Sinovac, the government detailed that “one of the greatest advantages of the Sinovac vaccine is to be a vaccine based on inactivated virus is a first generation strategy and traditional, comprises several components present in the SARSCoV-2 viral particle ”.

And he added: “It means that the immune response of the person receiving the vaccine is more complete, possibly giving the vaccinated person a better ability to act against new variants of the virus that could arise “.

Sinovac vaccine is stored at 2 ° to 8 ° Celsius. And it takes two doses to get an adequate immune response.

The vaccination plan is launched with the arrival in Chile on Thursday of 2 million doses of Sinovac vaccines. Next Sunday, another plane is expected to receive an additional 2 million doses of the same vaccine.

In a presidential statement, the government of Sebastián Piñera explained that the Ministry of Health, “on the basis of general information provided by clinical studies of the Catholic University of the Millennium Institute, has established that the Sinovac vaccine is safe and effective for people over 60 “.

These facts, adds the text “allow us to start next week, probably Wednesday, after having had the certificates that certify the safety of this vaccine, to begin with, In all regions of the country, a process of mass vaccination “.

Clarín editorial staff

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