Chile: with a million vaccinated, it could be the first emerging country to benefit from collective immunity

Chile passed one million people vaccinated against the coronavirus yesterday, six days after the start of the mass vaccination process among the elderly, who joined medical staff who have already been vaccinated since December, the health ministry reported.

The country has successfully vaccinated a total of 1,025,580 people, whose 376,519 are over 78 years old who started the mass vaccination process six days ago thanks to acquisition of four million doses from the Chinese laboratory Sinovac, reported the Ministry of Health.

This amount of dose is equivalent to 5.58 doses per 100 people, which places the Andean nation ninth in the international vaccination ranking, after Denmark and before Iceland, according to an analysis of Our world in data. However, neither the said organization nor the health portfolio specified the number of doses received by each person vaccinated (one or two).

“Today, we exceed one million people vaccinated. We have a million reasons, for most of the elderly, to be happy, ”said President Sebastián Piñera on his official Twitter account.

Meanwhile, a report of JP Morgan projected that Chile could be the first emerging country in the world to obtain collective immunity against the coronavirus.

The analysis considers vaccination processes in different countries around the world and makes a projection of when each would obtain this immunity. Chile would achieve this towards the end of the second quarter of this year.

“Of all the emerging markets that we analyze, Chile would be the first to gain immunity for its population from the second half of 2021,” the report said, cited by Mercury.

This estimate puts Chile ahead of countries in the region such as Brazil, Colombia, Mexico or Argentina, which would reach this threshold between the end of 2021 and the beginning of 2022. Even the country would be ahead of South Korea and China, countries which would obtain collective immunity by the end of this year.

The goal of the Chilean government is vaccinate 5 million people by the end of March and reach 15 of the 18 million inhabitants by July 2021.

The process unfolded quickly and it was only on Tuesday that 222,070 people were vaccinated, including the elderly, as well as those who work with essential and basic service functions of the State, personnel of the pharmacy and laboratory, in addition to the armed forces and the police. who attend the emergency of the pandemic.

Chile began immunizing its health workers in December, when it received a first batch of 154,000 doses of Pfizer / BioNtech vaccines against the coronavirus, which has already infected more than 758,000 people and killed 19,000 in the country.

The vaccination process was joined on Tuesday by the Easter island, the tourist island territory located in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, 3,700 kilometers from mainland Chile, where 120 people were vaccinated the first day after the arrival of a batch of 1,200 drugs from Sinovac. Island authorities indicate that no case of coronavirus has been recorded for more than 300 days because the entry of tourists is closed.

Chile reached purchase agreements nearby 36 million doses with Pfizer, Sinovac, Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca. The government also announced yesterday progress in negotiations with Russia for the acquisition of Sputnik V.

AFP and DPA agencies

THE NATION

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