SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) – After being one of the hardest hit countries in the world with COVID-19, Chile is now at the top of the list when it comes to vaccinating its population against the virus.
With more than 25% of people getting at least one shot, the 19 million country on the Pacific coast of South America is the champion of Latin America, and worldwide it is just behind Israel, the United Arab Emirates and the United Arab Emirates. United Kingdom.
That’s a long way from the start of the pandemic, when Chile was criticized for failing to locate and isolate infected people.
So what’s the secret to its success?
Government officials and health experts say it was the country’s first negotiations with vaccine makers, as well as previous experiences with robust vaccination programs, a record praised by the World Health Organization.
During the first months of the pandemic, the headlines in Chile were bleak: the country’s intensive care units were nearly full and the government could not control the spread of the virus, despite restrictions including mandatory lockdowns.
But in parallel, another story developed that few people knew, one that had started months earlier and that Chile would later guarantee rapid access to vaccines.
Andrés Couve, Chile’s minister of science, told The Associated Press that formal negotiations with vaccine-producing companies began last April, just a month after COVID-19 was declared a pandemic.
In May, said Couve, a team of experts and officials presented a plan to President Sebastián Piñera, including a roadmap on how to use the country’s network of trade agreements and previous contacts with pharmaceutical companies to get vaccines once they were developed. Recommendations included to be part of clinical studies.
This effort was supported by contacts made in China months earlier. In October 2019, Chilean biochemist Dr. Alexis Kalergis traveled to Beijing with two Chilean colleagues for an international conference on immunology. There Kalergis met experts from the Chinese pharmaceutical Sinovac Biotech Ltd.
Kalergis had already approached Sinovac to work on vaccine research. So when China announced in January 2020 that it had identified a new virus and within weeks saw the world spread it around the world, Kalergis knew he needed to contact his colleagues at Sinovac.
“Using our experience, the contacts and the interest we showed… we started discussions with Sinovac,” said Kalergis, director of the Milenio Institute of Immunology and Immunotherapy at the Catholic University of Chile.
He spoke to Sinovac colleagues in January and February 2020 and then went to Catholic University Dean Ignacio Sánchez with the details, saying they should be passed on to the government.
Sánchez approached Chile’s Health and Foreign Minister and urged early negotiations with Sinovac and other pharmaceuticals and Chile to participate in their clinical trials. Ministers agreed and the Chilean government began to establish diplomatic contacts.
In June, long before any other country in Latin America, Chile had signed a contract with Sinovac, who agreed to supply an early batch once the vaccine was approved, Kalergis said.
Rodrigo Yáñez, undersecretary for international economic relations and chief negotiator with companies to get the vaccines, said Chile understood from the outset that it had to work with several pharmaceutical companies at the same time.
“We looked at different alternatives and didn’t put all the eggs in the same basket,” he said.
Chile was part of a Sinovac clinical trial that started in December and involved 2,300 medical professionals. The government has not published its results, just saying they were good.
Trials have also been conducted in Chile with vaccines by AstraZeneca, Janssen and the Chinese pharmaceutical company CanSino, and the results have not been disclosed either.
Chile received its first vaccine doses in December, some 21,000 from Pfizer, but fewer than promised. The country immediately began to vaccinate medical workers. At the end of January, Chile received the first 4 million doses of Sinovac and was able to speed up the vaccination. Mass vaccinations began in February.
Chile has delivered more than 100,000 shots almost daily since early February, more than tripling this week.
On Wednesday, it hit a daily global record of 1.3 shots per 100 residents, followed by Israel at 1.04 doses, according to Our World in Data, a collaboration between researchers at the University of Oxford and the nonprofit Global Change Data Lab .
No other country in Latin America has ever had Chile’s success. For example, Brazil vaccinated only 4% of the population and Argentina about 3%.
Health Minister Enrique París said Chile has now secured 35 million doses to vaccinate 15 million people, and that it is already helping other countries. Earlier this month, Chilean authorities donated 20,000 doses of Sinovac to Paraguay and the same amount to Ecuador.
Chile “had good planning and wisely used the resources it has to negotiate bilateral agreements with a number of producers,” said Jarbas Barbosa, deputy director of the Pan American Health Organization.
This is not the first time that Chile has implemented a successful vaccination program. Last year, between March and April, when the virus emerged, Chilean authorities vaccinated 8 million people against the flu.
Mario Patiño, 75, was one of the first to be vaccinated with a Sinovac dose in February at a school in Lo Prado, a poor residential area of Santiago.
“Everything was perfect, fast, with excellent service, well organized,” said Patiño, who got his second chance on Saturday. “For me, the vaccine means being calmer.”