Chile has amazed the world these days. The South American country has become the Latin American champion in vaccination against COVID-19 and is among the top five nations leading in immunization against the virus.
Since the start of its mass vaccination campaign in February, Chile has vaccinated more than 25% of its population and is just behind Israel, the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom worldwide. And this nation of 19 million people aims to immunize 80% of its population by the end of June.
What is behind Chile’s success?
Officials and experts say the explanation lies in early and simultaneous negotiations with several pharmaceutical companies, previous contacts with some companies and a solid vaccination system covering the 4,000 kilometers of its territory.
In the first months of the pandemic, in 2020, headlines were that Chile had become one of the most virus-affected countries in the region, behind only Brazil and Peru, and criticism of the authorities abounded because they were unable to locate and isolate people. to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
In parallel, however, there was another story that few people knew about, which had begun many weeks earlier and would later help ensure rapid access to vaccines.
Science Minister Andrés Couve told the Associated Press that official negotiations with pharmaceutical companies began in April, a month after the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a pandemic. By May, he said, they had already presented President Sebastián Piñera with a roadmap with some plans to purchase the vaccines once they were developed, and that included considering the country’s participation in clinical trials.
But part of the vaccination history dates back to October 2019, in China, two months before the Asian nation announced the first cases of new coronavirus. That month, Dr. Alexis Kalergis, a biochemist and director of the Millennium Institute of Immunology and Immunotherapy at Catholic University, attended an international immunology conference in Beijing with two Chilean colleagues.
There he met with several expert colleagues, including some from the Chinese company Sinovac Biotech Ltd, which would soon be the key to the development of the new coronavirus vaccine.
When China announced in January 2020 that it had identified a new virus, Kalergis thought of the Sinovac experts he saw in Beijing and began contacting them.
“We are working on vaccines and we know that the kind of health tools that are needed for this type of disease are vaccines,” Kalergis told AP. “And taking advantage of the experience, contacts and interest I expressed, it was established, it was that I started conversations with Sinovac.
The immunologist said he had spoken with the rector of the Catholic University, Ignacio Sánchez, about the need for government involvement. Sánchez met with officials from the Ministries of Health, Science and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to whom he explained the need to start formal negotiations as soon as possible. Then came April and negotiations began.
At the head of the negotiations was Rodrigo Yáñez, Undersecretary for International Economic Relations. From the beginning, he told the PA, it was agreed to talk to various companies, laboratories and global bodies, such as the UN, and without always closing in on any possibility.
“The core of Chile’s vaccination program and the vaccine search strategy was precisely this pragmatism, this flexibility,” he told the PA. They always showed, he added, “different alternatives and not to put all the eggs in one basket.”
In June, long before any Latin American country, Chile had already won a contract with Sinovac, which promised to make preferential deliveries once the vaccine was authorized, according to Kalergis.
In addition, in December 2020, Chile was part of the clinical trials of the Sinovac vaccine with 2,300 people, mainly medical staff. The South American nation also participated in the studies of AstraZeneca, Janssen and CanSino, another Chinese pharmaceutical company.
Chile has now bought just over 35 million doses. So far, Sinovac has promised 14 million doses, Pfizer 10.1 million and AstraZeneca four million, in addition to the government’s purchase of another 7.8 million through the international Covax mechanism, which seeks equitable access to vaccines worldwide. At the moment, the authorities have invested 200 million dollars and estimate that they will inject another 100 million.
Chile did so well that last week it donated 20,000 doses of Sinovac to Paraguay and the same number to Ecuador for use by medical staff.
For Yáñez, the main Chilean negotiator, “it is perfectly possible for the country to articulate and triangulate in some way … supporting other countries in the management that may not have the capacity to manage this acquisition”.
No Latin American country has managed to vaccinate as many people as Chile. Far behind Brazil, with 4% of its population and Argentina, with about 3%.
For now, Chinese doses have become the mainstay of the Chilean vaccination program.
The country received just over 21,000 doses of Pfizer in December, less than promised, and began vaccinating health workers. But in January he received the first four million vaccinations from Sinovac and then accelerated.
Mass vaccination began on February 3, and since then Chile has vaccinated more than 100,000 people almost daily, although this week it reached a record 415,000 immunized in one day.
On Wednesday, the country also reached the global daily record of 1.3 vaccines per 100 inhabitants, followed by Israel with 1.04 doses, according to the records “Our World in Data”, a platform developed together with researchers from the University Oxfors and the non-profit organization Global Change Data Lab.
Chile has more than 885,000 confirmed cases since the beginning of the pandemic and more than 21,500 deaths.
“Chile’s primary health care system is the most important in Latin America,” and during the vaccination process “demonstrated its absolute strength,” Dr. Mercedes López Nitsche, director of the Immunology Program, told AP. Faculty. of Medicine of the University of Chile and the national program Millennium Nucleus of Immunology and Immunotherapy.
This is not the first time Chile has shown the strength of its vaccination system: between March and April 2020, as the virus spread around the world, the country vaccinated eight million people against the flu.
The Deputy Director of the Pan American Health Organization, Jarbas Barbosa, attributed Chile’s success to “being a high-income country” because it had good planning and used its resources wisely to enter into bilateral agreements with some manufacturers. ”. .
Mario Patiño, an employee of a 75-year-old travel agency, was one of those who received the first dose of Sinovac in February in Lo Padro, a poor commune on the outskirts of Santiago.
“Everything was perfect, everything was fast, excellent care, well organized,” said the man, who was scheduled to receive the second dose this weekend. For him, he added, receiving the vaccine means “being calmer.”