Chile looks to China for ongoing vaccination relief

Moving way ahead of the rest of Latin America in vaccinations against COVID-19 thanks to Chinese vaccines, Chile is not letting up in its campaign to put the pandemic behind it.

With more than 37 percent of the population having received at least one shot, Chile's vaccination campaign has been the fastest in South America, backed by strong cooperation with Beijing.

"Starting in February of this year, Chile has managed to structure a vaccination program with very positive characteristics, in which CoronaVac vaccines in particular, manufactured by (China's) Sinovac Biotech … have played a leading role," said Juan Esteban Musalem, president of the Chilean-Chinese Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Tourism.

"China and Chile have established expeditious channels of health collaboration, reflecting the excellent political and economic ties between the two countries," he said.

Chile has already administered over 11 million injections of which 10 million were manufactured by Sinovac and the rest by Pfizer and BioNTech. The Andean nation has a population of around 20 million.

"Some 13 million doses of vaccines have arrived in the country, with several more (shipments) on the way, in addition to an existing agreement of understanding to receive 20 million doses annually over the next three years. This shows the relevance that Chinese vaccines have had in this campaign," Musalem said.

"The Sinovac vaccine has been key for the vaccination campaign in Chile, given the fact that almost 94 percent of the people that have been vaccinated in our country have received it," said Sebastian Ugarte, director of the Critical Care Medicine Program Andres Bello University in the Chilean capital, Santiago.

"The supply and logistics of this vaccine for storage are simple, given the ranges of temperature that it requires. The availability of over 10 million doses of the vaccine has allowed the country to reach these important figures of vaccination," he said.

Chile is now going all in on Chinese vaccines. On Wednesday, the country's healthcare regulator approved the emergency use of Ad5-nCoV, or Convidicea, the vaccine developed by China's CanSino Biologics.

"It is an endorsement of the vaccination program that the government is currently running and that seeks to cover over 80 percent of the target population," said Heriberto Garcia, director of the Public Health Institute of Chile.

CanSino's vaccine, which has also been approved in Mexico, Pakistan and its home country of China, became the fourth COVID-19 vaccine to be approved in Chile. The first shipment of Convidecia is expected to arrive by early May.

Convidecia－developed jointly by CanSino, the Beijing Institute of Biotechnology and the National Research Council of Canada－requires only a single dose, the Public Health Institute of Chile said as it announced the emergency approval.

Meanwhile, the country continues to use Sinovac vaccines as a key part of its strategy to fight the pandemic.

"The use of the Sinovac vaccine in Chile has been very relevant," said Lorena Bustos, a director of Lab-Com, a healthcare public relations firm in Santiago. Efficacy and ease of distribution were key reasons for the vaccine's success, Bustos said.

Chile has seen a surge in the use of intensive care units as COVID infection cases rise in most age groups. However, people who have completed the two-dose scheme, or are on the final stage of completing it, are showing positive results.

"While the spread of the virus keeps rising in all age groups, the spread in the group of people older than 70 is going down," said Juan Cristobal Olivares, a software engineer who has been tracking pandemic data.

"There is already a downward trend in deaths for the group of people over 80. The most probable cause of this could be related to the vaccination campaign."

The Chilean government, in its inoculation campaign, aims to reach at least 80 percent of the population during the first half.

Despite the successful vaccination campaign, Chile cannot afford to let its guard down. The country is facing a second wave of coronavirus infections, which has resulted in extreme measures including lockdowns in cities like Santiago.

Chile has reported more than 1 million cases to date and is now averaging almost 7,000 new cases per day, close to a high since the pandemic started.

"A successful vaccination campaign is not enough because this progresses in a linear way. People are vaccinated one by one, while the virus is transmitted exponentially, with each person infecting two or more people, and these in turn infecting another two each," said Ugarte from Andres Bello University.

The writer is a freelance journalist for China Daily.