Despite an intensive vaccination campaign, with nearly 7 million doses injected on 19 million inhabitants, Chile has been breaking contamination records for several days.
On April 8, 8,195 positive cases were confirmed.
Never seen.
Hospitals are almost saturated, with even younger patients than in the first wave.
The country has therefore decided to close its borders throughout the month of April and to re-define its inhabitants.
The same goes for neighboring countries such as Bolivia, Brazil and Peru: most South American countries are all trying to curb the sudden increase in contamination, linked among other things to the presence of new Brazilian variants, which are more difficult to detect. fight on the vaccination plan.
In Chile, the majority of people vaccinated have indeed received a first dose of the Chinese Sinovac vaccine.
However, very recently, a study showed that the Chinese vaccine was only 56% effective after two doses and only 3% after one dose.
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For Benjamin Davido, infectious disease specialist at the Poincaré hospital in Garches, it is now time to adapt a new vaccine strategy according to the variants present in different countries.
“I think that the laboratories which develop the vaccines against the Covid must express themselves clearly on the effectiveness of their products vis-a-vis the variants.
The only evidence we have on the English variant.
This is an important subject because today we are no longer allowed to make mistakes.
There is no point in using a vaccine if it does not take into account the variants (Brazilian or South African) which are in the majority in certain countries, ”said the virologist.