Chilean President Sebastián Piñera announces the arrival of the first batch of Sinovac vaccine this Thursday at the Santiago de Chile airport. Esteban Felix / AP
With the arrival yesterday of almost two million doses of the Chinese Sinovac vaccine this Thursday, Chile has announced the start of its mass vaccination plan against covid-19, which will begin next Wednesday.
According to the calendar released by the Ministry of Health until February 12, and which will be updated with the hours, the vaccines will allow citizens over 71 years of age to be immunized with the first dose, among other risk groups, such as residents. and officials of residences for the elderly, pharmacy and laboratory workers and, among others, uniformed members of the Armed Forces and of Order who work on the action plans for the coronavirus.
The second dose will be applied 28 days later.
With 18,040 deaths confirmed by covid-19 and 709,088 infected accumulated since March 2020, the first inoculations in the South American country were carried out on December 25, with the North American Pfizer vaccine.
They were mainly aimed at health officials who work in critical patient units (UPC) in different hospitals in the country.
Since then, 56,764 people have been vaccinated with the first dose and 10,349 with the second.
But the Chinese Coronavac vaccine from the Sinovac laboratory - which was approved by the Institute of Public Health (ISP) and can be supplied to people over 60 years of age, as determined yesterday by the Ministry of Health - will allow a massive health policy to be started, as announced The authorities.
"We are going to update this calendar and it will be useful and necessary to carry out a process according to what Chileans need," said Piñera, 71, who according to the schedule would be vaccinated on Friday, February 12, together with the Minister of Cheers, Enrique Paris, 72.
The ISP, the autonomous body that authorizes drugs at the national level, has approved three vaccines: the North American Pfizer-BioNTech, the Chinese one from Sinovac and, a few hours ago, the one from the AstraZeneca laboratory together with the University of Oxford ( UK).
The Piñera Executive has made a series of steps to secure some 10 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and another 10 million doses of the Sinovac vaccine.
Additionally, Chile has established agreements and contracts with other laboratories such as AstraZeneca-Oxford, Janssen (Johnson & Johnson) and the agreement with COVAX –the global plan to distribute vaccines–, which would ensure 30 million doses.
The Government seeks to vaccinate the priority groups during the first quarter of 2021 (around five million people) and reach 80% of the population (15 million people, approximately) by the end of the first semester.
