Covid-19: Chile will apply a fourth dose of the injections starting in February

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Chile will apply a fourth dose of the Covid-19 injections starting in February, starting with the most vulnerable groups, President Sebastián Piñera announced Thursday (23).

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

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

“If you don’t have antibodies, there is a greater chance 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 Omicron strain,” Paris said.

There is convincing evidence that Covid shots do not prevent infection or the spread and transmission of the virus. It only reduces the risk of becoming very sick and dying from the virus.

So far, Chile – with about 19.2 million inhabitants – has registered 1,796,232 infected and 38,954 deaths from the disease. In the last day, 1,504 new infections and 54 deaths were recorded.

In the last two weeks, there has been a 33% drop in new cases amid the onset of summer.

ADVERSE EFFECTS

U.S. VAERS data, released Dec. 17 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), include a total of 965,843 adverse event reports across all age groups following COVID vaccination, including 20,244 deaths and 155,506 serious injuries between Dec. 14, 2020, and Dec. 10, 2021.

In children 5 to 11 years of age, 4,181 adverse events were reported, 80 classified as severe, and two deaths. One death occurred in a 5-year-old girl who died four days after her first Pfizer injection.

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

The country has more than 16.5 million people vaccinated with the full schedule (two doses), which represents 86.7% of the population. On December 6, it began vaccinating children from the age of three.