Chile Obtains More Chinese Vaccines; immunize children under 45

Chile acquired an additional four million doses of the Chinese Sinovac vaccine and will begin immunizing people between the ages of 35 and 45 in the next two weeks before the constituent elections, President Sebastián Piñera reported on Saturday.

The president said that three million will arrive in May, half of that batch on Sunday, which will total 17.2 million doses of that drug received by the South American country in the first half of 2021.

Along with those 17.2 million, almost 2.6 million doses of the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine and 158,000 of the AstraZeneca vaccine have already been received via the international COVAX mechanism.

In addition, the vaccination schedule will be advanced and next week all people between 45 and 40 years old, and the population between 39 and 35 years old, will be able to be inoculated the following week, prior to the elections of the Constituent Convention to prepare a new letter fundamental, of mayors, councilors and governors, scheduled for May 15 and 16.

Authorities expect to have seven million people with two doses of the vaccine by that date.

According to the latest figures provided by the authorities, almost 8.1 million people (52.9% of the vaccinable population) have received one dose and almost 6.7 million have received two doses (44% of the population).

These figures place Chile as the second country with the highest percentage of fully vaccinated population in the world, only behind Israel, according to the authorities.

The country is still going through a critical moment of the pandemic with a good part of its population under quarantine and hospitals 94% saturated. Chile has so far registered more than 1.2 million cases and almost 26,500 deaths from COVID-19.