Coronavirus cases in Chile have reached record levels despite vaccination of vaccines

LONDON – Chile’s coronavirus vaccination campaign has been one of the fastest and most extensive in the world, but a recent increase in infections has sparked concern beyond its borders.

Nearly 40% of the South American country’s total population has now received at least one dose of Covid-19 vaccine, according to statistics compiled by Our World in Data, which reflects one of the highest vaccination rates in the world.

Only Israel and the United Kingdom vaccinated a larger portion of their population with at least one dose.

Nevertheless, Chile has endured a sharp rise in coronavirus infections in recent weeks, even with its world-famous vaccination and strict closures for many of its 19 million inhabitants.

The regional director of the Pan-American Health Organization has since stressed that vaccines for most countries in the region will not be enough to prevent rising infection rates.

The number of daily cases in Chile rose to a record high on April 9 and rose above 9,000 for the first time since the pandemic began, significantly higher than the peak of nearly 7,000 recorded last summer.

Health Minister Enrique Paris told reporters on Thursday that he hoped the increase in daily cases had now climbed to its peak.

“Once we reach the peak, we do not expect a reduction, but a stabilization and then a return to smaller numbers of positive patients,” he told Reuters.

Health experts say the country’s latest increase in cases has been driven in part by more virulent strains of the virus, relaxation of social health measures, increased mobility and the repulsion of simple precautions – such as physical distance and wearing a mask.

The center-right government of Chile, led by President Sebastian Pinera, has ordered that the country’s borders be terminated from March to November 2020, albeit with a few exceptions, before the decision was made to reopen it to international passengers late last year. .

Shops, restaurants and some resorts have also been opened to boost the country’s pandemic economy.

Although the spread of a more virulent strain of the virus, such as the P.1 variant, first discovered in travelers from Brazil, vaccination of the country was most prevalent, leading to a significant increase in cases .

Questions have also been raised about the effectiveness of the vaccine, given Chile’s widespread use of CoronaVac, the coronavirus vaccine manufactured by Chinese firm Sinovac.

This comes after the head of China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention said earlier this month that China may need to replace its Covid vaccines or change the way they are administered to make them effective.

“We will solve the problem that the current vaccines do not have very high protection rates,” George Gao, director general of the Chinese CDC, said at a conference on April 11. He has since told state media that his comments are misunderstood.

Data in the late stage of China’s Covid vaccines remain unpublished, and the available data on the CoronaVac vaccine are diverse. In Brazilian trials, the vaccine was found to be just over 50% effective, which is significantly less effective than people like Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Oxford-AstraZeneca, while Turkish researchers reported efficacy of up to 83.5%.

A study published by the University of Chile earlier this month reported that CoronaVac was 56.5% effective two weeks after the second doses were administered in the country. Most importantly, they also reported that one dose was only 3% effective.

‘It may help to explain why Chile – with one of the world’s strongest vaccines but 93% of the doses coming from China – is experiencing a simultaneous expansion in cases, and a much slower decline in hospitalizations and deaths in comparison with the early rollout in Israel, the United Kingdom and the United States, ‘said Ian Bremmer, president of risk consultant Eurasia Group, in a research note.

“Chile and the United Arab Emirates are considering introducing a third dose (ie a second shot) of the Chinese vaccine accordingly; a change in communication that will increase the vaccine’s hesitation for Chinese vaccines,” he said. Bremmer said.

“I can not stress this enough – for most countries, vaccines are not going to stop this wave of the pandemic,” Carissa Etienne, director of PAHO, said during a weekly press conference on Wednesday. “There is simply not enough available to protect everyone in the countries at greatest risk.”

Etienne urged policymakers in the region to implement ‘comprehensive strategies’ to speed up the introduction of vaccines and halt their distribution using proven public health measures.

On April 14, the United States reported more than 1.3 million Covid infections and nearly 36,000 deaths in the past week, according to data compiled by the United Nations Health Agency.

To date, the United States has recorded 58.8 million cases and more than 1.4 million deaths, making it the region in the world worst affected.

“We are not acting like a region in the midst of a worse outbreak,” said Etienne of PAHO, describing South America as the ‘epicenter’ of the virus.

In addition to relaxed restrictions in some areas, Etienne said new and highly transmissible variants of the virus have caused a strong acceleration of cases. Currently, there is a sharp increase in infections in Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, Peru and some parts of Bolivia.

Paraguay, Uruguay, Argentina and Chile are also experiencing a steady increase in Covid cases, Etienne said.