Chile will apply a fourth dose of the vaccine against Covid-19 from February

Chile will apply from February a fourth dose from Covid-19 vaccineStarting with the most vulnerable groups, the president announced this Thursday, Sebastian Piñera.

“In the month of February, or when necessary, we will start vaccination with the fourth dose, because the first concern and priority is to protect the health and life of our compatriots, “said Piñera during an act to commemorate the first year of the launch of the vaccination campaign against Covid-19 in Chile.

Piñera reported that the fourth dose will be administered first to the most vulnerable groups, such as health personnel, the elderly and chronically ill, and then spread to the rest of the population.

“And good news: we have already secured the necessary vaccines for that fourth dose,” he said.

Earlier, the Minister of Health, Enrique Paris, explained that the decision to place the fourth dose was made because portfolio studies “really show that there is a drop in the rate of antibodies” that the vaccines contain and that fight Covid-19, six months after the last dose was injected. .

In this way, the South American country will be able to better face the omicron variant, which is wreaking havoc on Europe Y U.S, of which 133 cases have been confirmed in Chile as of Wednesday.

“If they do not have antibodies there is a greater possibility of getting sick. It has been shown that a third dose, we are not talking about the fourth, improves the immune response to the new strain Ómicron“said Paris.

Until now, Chile – of some 19.2 million inhabitants – has registered 1 million 796,232 infected and 38,954 deaths from the disease. In the last day, 1,504 new infections and 54 deaths were reported.

In the last two weeks, there has been a 33% drop in new cases, in the middle of the beginning of the austral summer.

On December 24, 2020, the successful Chilean vaccination program began, with the arrival of the first shipment of 9,750 vaccines from the laboratory. Pfizer.

In one year, Chile has received more than 48 million doses of the vaccines Pfizer-BioNTech (17 million 863,950), AstraZeneca (4 million 030,900), Sinovac (25 million 660,876) and CanSino (575,908).

To date, the country has more than 16.5 million people vaccinated with its complete scheme (two doses), which represents 86.7% of the population. On December 6, he began vaccinating children from the age of three.