A few days after receiving the first dose of Chinese-made coronavirus vaccine, Rodrigo Jordán became ill and tested positive for Covid-19. The 61-year-old man was hospitalized behind his home in the Chilean capital, Santiago, for nine days and needed extra oxygen to get through.
Across Chile – which has organized one of the fastest vaccination campaigns in the world using the vaccine developed by Chinese drugmaker Sinovac Biotech Ltd. – health authorities are struggling to cope with the rise of new infections and deaths.
More than 7.6 million people, half of Chile’s adult population, have already received at least one dose of the vaccine, most of it made by the Chinese drug maker, making the country a real test ground for a vaccine that Beijing supplies it to developing countries.
The problem, say public health officials, was that people generally overestimated the vaccine’s effectiveness after just one of two recommended doses and moved to ease pandemic control restrictions too soon.
“With a single dose, we know that protection is very poor,” said Claudia Cortés, an infectious disease expert at the Santa Maria Clinic in Santiago, where about 10 percent of Covid-19 patients at her hospital received a single blow. “It was not clear that you needed two doses – that you had to wait.”