is 67% effective

The Chilean Ministry of Health presented its results on Friday for the phase 4 study it has conducted on China’s Coronavac vaccine against the coronavirus. According to these records, the drug has a 67% effective for symptomatic COVIDand 89% effectiveness in preventing the development of cases requiring admission to intensive care.

“This shows that the vaccine we use is working, but we must continue to move forward with the vaccination plan, and we cannot relax the preventive measures ”, declared the Chilean Minister of Health Enrique Paris during the press conference during which the results were presented .

The report also noted that the vaccine offered 85% protection against the possibility of ending up in hospital, and a 80% against the risk of death.

The study, carried out between February 2 and April 1, was carried out on a population of 10.5 million people. Of this total, 6.8 million had received the first dose, while about 4 million had been vaccinated with both doses.

This is the first large study in the real population on this vaccine, and not a clinical trial, which only measures effectiveness with volunteers and under specific conditions.

The study, titled “Efficacy of CoronaVac vaccine with inactive virus against SARS-CoV-2 in Chile”, was presented by Dr Rafael Araos, adviser to the Under-Secretariat of Public Health of the Ministry of Health.

Chinese vaccines have been left at the center of controversy after Chinese health officials said they were “ineffective”. A few days later, however, Beijing came out to clarify that its sayings had been misinterpreted.

So far, around 7 million Chileans have received at least one dose of the coronavirus vaccine. About 5 million people have been fully immunized. Over 90% of people vaccinated in the Trans-Andean country received the Coronavac vaccine.

Chile, which has committed more than 35 million doses from different laboratories and hopes to obtain collective immunity in June, has so far authorized the administration of 4 vaccines: Pfizer / BioNTech, Coronavac, AstraZeneca and recently that of the Chinese laboratory CanSino.

Despite the rapid pace of vaccination, the country is experiencing the worst times of the pandemic, with hospitals on the verge of collapse, an average of 7,000 cases per day, more than 90% of the population in strict home confinement and borders closed until May. .

Experts point out that the successful vaccination process could have played against Chile and have leads its 19 million inhabitants to overconfidence, to which is added fatigue after a year with restrictions and the circulation of new variants.