Chile receives 161,850 doses of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine
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The new shipment will be used primarily for education workers.
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Health Minister Enrique Paris reported that 4 million vaccines from the Sinovac laboratory will arrive next week and called on people to respect the vaccination calendar.
On Thursday, Health Minister Enrique Paris, together with Education Minister Raúl Figueroa and Science Minister Andrés Couve received a shipment of 161,850 new doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. This shipment comes in addition to the 40,000 doses remaining from previous shipments, making a total of over 200,000 doses.
The Health Minister explained that next week 190,000 additional Pfizer-BioNTech doses will arrive. Minister Paris explained that the Pfizer vaccine “will be given primarily, but not exclusively, to education workers, 80,000 of whom have already been inoculated over the last three days.”
Education Minister Raúl Figueroa, emphasized that these doses guarantee “greater safety factors that will allow us to start the 2021 school year in a completely different way from last year, and provide our students with the benefits and support they need in the school system.”
Science Minister Andrés Couve recalled how last year “those of us at the Science Ministry met with scientific societies universities and researchers to plan how the scientific community would contribute to the pandemic. A year on, we’re proud to have been able to contribute to the fields of diagnosis, genomic surveillance and accelerating vaccine availability, which today we are achieving with a new shipment”.
Speaking about the immunization campaign, Minister Paris reported that starting next week “those people over 65 who haven´t yet been vaccinated and those over 65 with pre-existing conditions will be eligible for vaccination, and starting on March 1, vaccination will get underway for patients with pre-existing conditions in descending order of age.”
The Minister asked everyone to respect the vaccination calendar and trust that there will be sufficient doses. “Besides the second shipment from Pfizer, 4 million more doses of the Sinovac vaccine are arriving next week. Therefore, we will have enough doses to continue inoculating those left in the first priority group and to begin with the second doses,” he said.