“Slow Progress: 14,000 Daily Doses of Covid and Bivalent Vaccination, Target Population Not Reached for Over a Year” – La Tercera (rewritten by AI)

On October 11, the Health authorities officially began the vaccination campaign with the bivalent dose against Covid-19, which contains both the original Wuhan strain and omicron and allows the population to be protected against the new variants. that have emerged in recent times.

Of course, the process is intended only for risk groups: health officials, immunocompromised people and people over 50 years of age. Thus, a target population of 8,325,856 individuals is configured., of which 2,478,104 are inoculated, according to figures from the health portfolio. In other words, in five months 29.76% of the total have been vaccinated.

These numbers worry experts and in recent weeks various specialists have pointed out that the bivalent vaccination campaign is going slowly and insist that the health authorities must intensify the call for people to be immunized against Covid-19. Even from the Ministry of Health (Minsal), with Minister Ximena Aguilera at the helm, they have insisted that “we do not trust ourselves, the pandemic is not over yet”, and they have also deployed various operations to encourage inoculation, both against the coronavirus Like against the flu.

According to data from the Department of Statistics and Health Information (Deis) of the Minsal, during the week of March 20 to 26 the campaign increased by 51%, since 129,259 people were inoculated, 43,000 more than the previous one. In fact, during the last month there has been an acceleration in vaccination (see graph).

However, it is still not going fast enough, since since the campaign began, an average of 14,661 people have been vaccinated daily. In other words, to immunize the rest of the target population it would take 398 days, more than a year, since there are still 5,847,752 people missing.

In this scenario, the executive director of the Center for Public Policies and Innovation in Health (CIPS) of the Universidad del Desarrollo, Paula Daza, affirms that “with the low level of coverage we have, it is not enough to just make the call to get vaccinated. I commented on it at the meeting last week with Undersecretary Albagli. Strategies focused on the type of vaccine, target population and territory are needed, because winter is very close”.

The former Undersecretary of Public Health stresses that it is necessary to speed up the campaign: “Only to reach 80% bivalent coverage on June 1, the number of daily doses that are currently being administered must be increased fivefold.” In this sense, and as an example, there are 83 days left for the start of winter and 70,455 daily vaccines would have to be administered to reach the target population of 8,325,856 individuals.

Consulted by La Tercera, María Paz Bertoglia, head of the National Immunization Program, highlights the increase in vaccination that has been seen in recent weeks, and affirms that “today we have 29.76% coverage in bivalent vaccination nationwide, 56.4% in people aged 80 and over and 55% in people between 70 and 79 years. We continue to work hard to improve these numbers.”

The authority also explains that the necessary measures are being taken to improve vaccination rates: “The strategies that have been promoted to motivate the population to get vaccinated correspond mainly to bringing the vaccine closer to those who should receive it the most, by opening vaccination points throughout the country and carrying out extramural operations”.

In addition, on March 15, the campaign against influenza began. For this reason, the health authorities have been implementing strategies that combine both vaccines. “We are very aware of the challenge of increasing vaccination levels, so we are investing all our efforts in promoting inoculation, especially for the population at risk, which is more vulnerable to presenting serious conditions due to this disease. For the abovewe have launched our “Vaccinate with the Dupla” campaign, with which we are vaccinating populations at risk against influenza and against Covid-19 on the same day, making the vaccine available in all our vaccination centers and bringing it closer with campaigns”, says Bertoglia.

Gabriel Cavada, a biostatistician and academic at the U. Finis Terrae School of Medicine, assures that “it is true that we are in another stage of the pandemic, but risk groups are still exposed, and if these people are infected they will not to have a good time Covid-19 can still cause a serious condition, and even be fatal. The pandemic cannot yet be trivialized.”

For this reason, he insists that vaccination rates must continue to be improved, since they make a difference when people are infected. In fact, the effect of the vaccine to prevent serious cases has been demonstrated, since in recent weeks Chile reached the lowest number of hospitalizations since the start of the pandemic. At the national level, There are 70 people in some critical unit and there are health centers that have their ICU free of Covid.

Mabel Aylwin, an infectologist at Clínica Universidad de los Andes, agrees and affirms that winter also brings risks, which is why more strategies must be implemented: “At this time we have to appeal to people’s responsibility. Strategies have to be on the side of campaigns and favor the facilitation of processes. You have to think about winter, because there is a high probability that respiratory viruses will increase in winter,” he says..

Epidemiological reports are showing the reappearance of some viruses such as influenza, adenovirus and parainfluenza, with a significant increase in cases, as seen during the winters prior to the pandemic.

In the latest report from the Institute of Public Health (ISP), 2,339 samples were analyzed for respiratory viruses and 16.3% of them were positive, that is, 382. Covid-19 was one of the most diagnosed, since 40% of the evidence is up to him. It is followed by influenza, with 16.2% of positive diagnoses.

For this same week, but last year, the situation was completely different. On that occasion, 996 cases were analyzed for respiratory viruses and 10.3% were positive for some of the viral agents studied.