Coronavac is 86% effective against Covid-19 fatalities in Chile – study

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The controversy over Coronavac’s effectiveness following Covid-19 outbreaks in Chile, even with advanced vaccination, may be about to cool.

A study published Wednesday (7) in the New England Journal of Medicine shows that the vaccine had 86% effectiveness in preventing deaths from the disease in the Andean country. For the study, results were observed in 10.2 million people vaccinated with the two doses of Coronavac between Feb. 2 and May 1.

Read also: Check out our coverage on Chile

It is the first study of the vaccine’s effectiveness to be published in a scientific journal. Until then, this was one of the criticisms the Chinese Sinovac vaccine received.

Among those who were fully vaccinated, the vaccine’s efficacy was 65.9% for preventing Covid-19, 87.5% for preventing hospitalizations, 90.3% for preventing ICU admissions, and 86.3% for preventing disease-related deaths.

About 55% of the Chilean population is already protected by both doses, the best performance in Latin America.

“It is the first solid article published in the most prestigious journal in the world. The results speak for themselves. Coronavac has an excellent performance in what matters most, saving lives,” says infectious diseases physician and Unesp professor Alexandre Naime.

“It’s a solid result that contradicts the fake news of vaccination opponents and shows that every vaccination counts and underscores the need for increased vaccination.”

In Brazil, Coronavac is produced at the Butantan Institute. Although it was the first vaccine in the vaccination campaign and the most widely used until April, it faces political criticism from President Jair Bolsonaro.

“It is probably the vaccine that has saved the most lives, thousands, in Brazil. That will go down in history forever,” Naime says.