The vaccination campaign against COVID-19 began on Wednesday in Chile, with 71,648 people receiving the first dose of vaccine, according to the latest figures from the Ministry of Health, of which 14,874 correspond to the Chinese Sinovac vaccine.
“I think this is a magnificent day for the country. We are very happy and grateful to the medical staff,” said Health Minister Enrique Paris, who hopes to have reached 80,000 doses by the end of the day.
“I want to thank the elders on this day, they were a real example,” said Paris, on a day when Chilean President Sebastián Piñera led in the city of Futrono, in the center of the country, begins this campaign with a woman of 94 Ernestina Godoy, the first to receive a dose of vaccine.
“After eleven months of painful pandemic periods, today we begin the process of mass vaccination across the country in order to protect our compatriots from the threat posed by COVID-19,” Piñera said in a statement published in the newspaper “Third”.
During this first week, the goal set by the authorities is to vaccinate people over the age of 85, as well as health workers and those working in the centers for the elderly and minors, to continue in a second phase adults over the age of 71, pharmacy and laboratory staff, police and armed forces officers and other officials whose work is considered essential.
This plan involves vaccinating about five million people in the first quarter of 2021, which represents the entire population at risk and another ten million for the next three months. To this end, Minister Paris has already advanced that about nine million doses of Chinese vaccine will arrive in the country before the first week of March.
“Last night we had a meeting with Sinovac and they provided us with three shipments of over three million doses each, meaning we will have nine million new doses. In the last week of February, two more shipments arrive and one in the first week of March.” he explained.
At the same time, he reported that the pharmaceutical company Pfizer will resume shipments to Chile starting next week, with a departure of “about 400 thousand additional doses.” In all, the government, in talks with several laboratories since May, said it expects to receive about 35 million doses.
The Ministry of Health has reported over 2,600 new cases of coronavirus in the last 24 hours, its lowest number in almost a month. In total, 736,645 people have contracted the disease since the beginning of the pandemic, of which 22,739 remain active and 18,576 have died.
However, the number of admissions to intensive care reached the highest level since the end of July, with 1,484 people hospitalized, of which 66 are in critical condition.