SANTIAGO —
Starting next week, Chile will reinforce with a third dose of the COVID-19 vaccine to those who have already completed their immunization schedule and awaits authorization from the Institute of Public Health – the Chilean regulatory body – to inoculate minors between 3 and 11 years.
President Sebastián Piñera made the announcement on Thursday from his residence, where he is serving a preventive quarantine after visiting Peru, where he attended the inauguration of Pedro Castillo. All persons returning from abroad must comply with mandatory confinement.
Piñera said that the reinforcement program will begin next Wednesday, August 11 with people immunized with the Sinovac vaccine, according to an age calendar that will start with those over 55 years of age. About 90% of the population received the Chinese immunizer.
The Minister of Health, Enrique Paris, specified for the booster dose Chile will use the British Swedish AstraZeneca vaccine.
The Undersecretary of Health, Paula Daza, said that the reinforcement so far only considers people immunized with Sinovac, a vaccine used in about 90% of the population. He added that it is still being studied whether the same will be done with those who were vaccinated with the American Pfizer.
Piñera also announced the vaccination of minors between the ages of 3 and 11, a process that will begin when authorized by the Public Health Institute.
The Chilean program considers the vaccination of 15.2 of the 19 million inhabitants of the South American country. 87.8% have the first dose and 82% completed the immunization schedule. Around 1.8 million people are lagging behind, despite multiple calls from authorities to be innocent.
Chile’s decision to start the reinforcement of vaccination comes a day after the World Health Organization (WHO) made a global call for the third dose to be delayed until the end of September so that more vaccines reach the most important countries. poor, who have very low percentages of immunized. The objective of the WHO is that at least 10% of the world population is immunized with the two doses required by most vaccines.
“We cannot accept that countries that have used the most vaccine supply still use more vaccines, while the most vulnerable people in other parts of the world remain unprotected,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, CEO of The OMS.
When consulting Undersecretary Daza about the WHO call, she replied that “it is feasible that countries like Chile can maintain good immunity to reduce the possibility of contagion, that is what we are doing in our country.” He added that “we are always analyzing the recommendations and obviously the possibility of cooperating with other Latin American countries,” and recalled that at the beginning of the year Chile donated 20,000 doses of vaccines to Ecuador and Paraguay.
The large percentage of vaccination in Chile is reflected in a large drop in daily infections, around 1,000 in the last days, which led the government to lift quarantines in almost the entire country and to relax other sanitary restrictions and allow the opening of the Most of the shops with reduced capacity. However, there is concern among the authorities about an eventual expansion of those infected with the dreaded Delta variant. Officially there are 55 infected with it among travelers who returned from abroad and four more due to community transmission.
Chile registers 1.6 million infected and more than 35,000 deaths.
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