SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) – After being among the most affected nations in the world with COVID-19, Chile is now close to the top among countries that vaccinate its population against the virus.
With more than 25% of its people receiving at least one blow, the 19 million country on the Pacific coast of South America is the champion of Latin America, and globally it is just behind Israel, the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom.
This is a cry far from the beginning of the pandemic, when Chile was criticized for its inability to track down and isolate infected people.
So what’s the secret to his success?
Government officials and health experts say it was the country’s early negotiations with vaccine manufacturers, as well as his past experience with solid vaccination programs, a record praised by the World Health Organization.
In the first months of the pandemic, Chile’s headlines were bleak, with intensive care units in the country almost full and the government unable to control the spread of the virus, despite restrictions that included mandatory blockades.
But another story unfolded in parallel, which few people knew about, one that had begun months earlier and would later guarantee Chile quick access to vaccines.
Chile’s science minister Andres Couve told the Associated Press that official negotiations with vaccine companies began in April last year, just a month after COVID-19 was declared a pandemic.
By May, Couve said, a team of experts and officials presented President Sebastián Piñera with a plan, including a roadmap on how to use the country’s network of trade agreements and previous contacts with pharmaceutical companies to get vaccines once they have been developed. Recommendations included inclusion in clinical trials.
This effort was helped by contacts made earlier months in China. In October 2019, Chilean biochemist Dr. Alexis Kalergis traveled to Beijing with two Chilean colleagues for an international immunology congress. There, Kalergis met with experts from the Chinese pharmaceutical industry Sinovac Biotech Ltd.
Kalergis had already approached Sinovac to work on the vaccine research. So when China announced in January 2020 that it had identified a new virus and in a few weeks the world saw it spread around the globe, Kalergis knew he had to address his Sinovac colleagues.
“Taking advantage of our experience, contacts and the interest we have expressed … we have started conversations with Sinovac,” said Kalergis, director of the Milenio Institute for Immunology and Immunotherapy at the Catholic University of Chile.
He spoke with Sinovac colleagues in January and February 2020, then went to Catholic University dean Ignacio Sánchez with the details, saying they should be forwarded to the government.
Sánchez addressed Chile’s health minister and foreign secretary, calling for early negotiations with Sinovac and other pharmaceuticals and for Chile to be part of their clinical trials. The ministers agreed, and the Chilean government began to establish diplomatic contacts.
By June, long before any other Latin American country, Chile had a contract with Sinovac, which agreed to deliver a batch early once the vaccine was authorized, Kalergis said.
Rodrigo Yáñez, Undersecretary for International Economic Relations and chief negotiator with vaccine companies, said Chile understood from the outset that it needed to work with different pharmaceutical companies at the same time.
“We looked at different alternatives and didn’t put all the eggs in one basket,” he said.
Chile was part of a Sinovac clinical trial that began in December and involved 2,300 health workers. The government did not publish its results, saying only that they are good.
Studies on vaccines by AstraZeneca, Janssen and the Chinese pharmaceutical company CanSino have also been conducted in Chile, and these results have not been disclosed.
Chile received the first doses of the vaccine in December, about 21,000 from Pfizer, but there were fewer than promised. The country immediately began vaccinating medical workers. By the end of January, Chile had received the first 4 million doses from Sinovac and had managed to speed up inoculation. Mass vaccination began in February.
Chile has managed more than 100,000 photos almost daily since early February, and this has tripled this week.
On Wednesday, it hit a global daily record of 1.3 photos per 100 inhabitants, followed by Israel with 1.04 doses, according to Our World in Data, a collaboration between researchers at Oxford University and the nonprofit Global Change Data Lab.
No other Latin American country has had anything but the success of Chile. Brazil, for example, vaccinated only 4% of its population and Argentina about 3%.
Health Minister Enrique Paris said Chile has now provided 35 million doses to vaccinate 15 million people and is already helping other countries. Earlier this month, Chilean authorities donated 20,000 doses of Sinovac to Paraguay and the same amount to Ecuador.
Chile has had “good planning and has wisely used the resources it has to conclude bilateral agreements with some manufacturers,” said Jarbas Barbosa, deputy director of the Pan American Health Organization, this week.
This is not the first time that Chile has a successful vaccination program. Last March, between March and April, when the virus appeared, Chilean authorities vaccinated 8 million people against the flu.
Mario Patiño, 75, was among the first to be vaccinated with a dose of Sinovac in February at a school in Lo Prado, a poor residential area of Santiago.
“Everything was perfect, fast, with excellent service, well organized,” said Patiño, who received his second shot on Saturday. “For me, the vaccine means being calmer.”