Uruguay has started applying third dose of coronavirus vaccine

About a third of Uruguay’s 3.5 million people have already signed up for the vaccine after receiving two shots of the vaccine from Chinese laboratory Sinovac.

Uruguay has already vaccinated 73% of its population with at least one dose against Covid-19, while 67% have the full diet. But of the total vaccinated, 65% received Coronavac, considered less effective in reducing infections.

In this context, the objective of the authorities when approving the reinforcement is to take advantage of the fact that there is still no community circulation of the Delta variant to build a wall of immunological protection.

In this way, Uruguay becomes third Latin American country, after Chile and Dominican Republic, to strengthen inactivated virus vaccine (Sinovac) with a dose of messenger RNA (Pfizer), although there are no studies yet on mixing these two platforms.

The government of Luis Lacalle Pou took the decision after the recommendation of the National Advisory Commission on Vaccines and an ad hoc group, while the scientific community never tires of repeating that the association is safe.

“The mix of platforms strengthens immunity, historically this has been the case”, virologist Santiago Mirazo told AFP news agency. “It is clear from a theoretical and experimental point of view throughout the history of immunology,” he added.

The scientist explained that one of the reasons for the decision to apply a third dose is to verify that the Coronavac antibody titers decrease over the months.

“Studies that have been done on a combination of vaccines have shown a very slight increase in side effects,” Mirazo said, also specifying that most of them are “light and moderate”.

“The measure is reasonable, correct, timely and evidence-based,” Mirazo insisted, adding that it was “a public health decision.”

Uruguay, after remaining for several weeks the Nation with the most daily deaths in relation to its population, experienced Saturday, August 7 the first day of 2021 without deaths due to the virus, a fact that was repeated the next day.