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April 19, 2021

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Chile report highlights CoronaVac’s effectiveness

A REAL-WORLD study of millions of Chileans who had received the Chinese-developed CoronaVac vaccine has found it to be 67 percent effective against symptoms and 80 percent against death from COVID-19, the South American country’s Health Ministry said on Friday.

Ministry adviser Rafael Araos said the study covered 10.5 million people, including 2.5 million who had received both doses of the vaccine and 1.5 million who had received a single dose between February 2 and April 1.

It counted cases starting 14 days after application of the second dose of the vaccine, which in Chile was given 28 days after the first.

Araos said it had reduced hospitalizations by 85 percent, intensive care visits by 89 percent and deaths by 80 percent.

“It’s a game changer for that vaccine and I think it ratifies quite graphically the discussion over its efficacy,” Chile’s Vice Trade Minister Rodrigo Yanez told Reuters, adding it should help it with approvals with the World Health Organization as the first real-world study.

It is one of the broadest studies so far published of any of the vaccines used against the new coronavirus. Most previous studies were based on clinical studies of limited groups of thousands of people given the vaccines to test efficacy and safety prior to general use.

Leading the region in jabs

Chile launched its mass vaccination drive in February and has led the region with a vaccination campaign that has reached 40 percent of its 19 million people overall — and 27 percent of those have so far received both doses. It began in large part among the elderly and health workers, but has expanded to include essential workers and recently people as young as 48.

It has contracted for 60 million doses of the CoronaVac vaccine produced by Sinovac over three years, and also has been using vaccines produced by Pfizer. About 90 percent of vaccines used so far in Chile have been CoronaVac.

CoronaVac is a traditional type of vaccine, using inactivated coronavirus to trigger immunity.

The country has reported 1.1 million confirmed infections of the new virus and nearly 25,000 deaths. Araos said the report did not look at how the vaccine stood up to coronavirus variants, including the P1 mutant first identified in Brazil.




 

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