A few days after receiving his first dose of a Chinese-made coronavirus vaccine, Rodrigo Jordán became ill and tested positive for Covid-19. The 61-year-old was hospitalized for nine days near his home in the Chilean capital of Santiago, and needed supplemental oxygen to get through.
Across Chile – which has launched one of the world’s fastest vaccination campaigns using the vaccine from Chinese drug company Sinovac Biotech Ltd. – Health authorities are struggling to cope with a wave of new infections and deaths.
More than 7.6 million people, half of the adult Chilean population, have already received at least one dose of vaccine, most made by the Chinese drug manufacturer, making the country a real testing ground for a vaccine that Beijing provides to countries around the developing world . .
The problem, public health officials say, was that people generally overestimated the effectiveness of the vaccine after just one of the two recommended doses and started relieving pandemic control limitations too soon.
“With one dose, we know that protection is very weak,” said Claudia Cortés, an infectious disease expert at Santa Maria Clinic in Santiago, where about 10% of Covid-19 patients in her hospital receive an injection. has got. “It is not clearly stated that you need two doses – that you have to wait.”