On Thursday, the President of Chile, Sebastián Piñera, received the third shipment of almost 2 million doses of the Sinovac vaccine against COVID-19. The arrival of these vaccines allows for the continuation of the mass inoculation plan that began in Chile on February 3.
“Fortunately, Chile had the foresight to secure the supply of vaccines. We have a long and beautiful tradition of strengthening our Vaccination and Immunization System, the National Immunology Program. This is the reason why we must not only continue with this urgent and necessary process of mass vaccination, but we must also step it up to meet the demanding goals that we have set for ourselves,” the President said at the Arturo Merino Benítez airport in the company of Health Minister Enrique Paris and Science Minister Andrés Couve.
On February 23, over 3 million people were vaccinated with the first dose in Chile. The process will continue over the next weeks to vaccinate priority groups within the first quarter of the year, around 5 million people, to eventually reach 80% of the population.
The President took the opportunity to thank ministers, healthcare workers, mayors, volunteers, law enforcement and especially senior citizens for their help during the vaccination process.
“To date, we have received 4.3 million vaccines which has allowed us to vaccinate over 3.1 million people and between today and tomorrow we are going to receive an additional 4 million doses, totaling 8.3 million vaccines in Chile,” the President remarked.
The Government has engaged in a series of negotiations to secure 10 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and more than 10 million doses of the Sinovac vaccine in addition to the agreements and contracts already in place with other laboratories, such as AstraZeneca Oxford, Janssen (Johnson & Johnson) and the COVAX agreement, securing over 30 million doses of vaccines for Chile.
“On this issue, we have set an example of unity, teamwork, commitment and solidarity which only warrants gratitude,” said President Sebastián Piñera.
The vaccination calendar with specific dates for different groups is available at https://www.gob.cl/yomevacuno/.