“Children can also get sick. 12% of the cases we have had in our country during this year and a half are children under 18 years old,” said the Undersecretary of Public Health, Paula Daza.
The Institute of Public Health (ISO) authorized last Monday the vaccination with the Sinovac laboratory injection to children older than 6 years, thus making Chile the first country in South America to give the green light to inoculation for this age group.
Chile had already approved in June the use of the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine for children over 12 years of age and almost 700,000 have already received at least one dose.
“Today we do not have vaccines for children under 6 years of age, but if we vaccinate the whole family we are going to act in a cocoon way, protecting the little ones,” said Daza.
Vaccines, the undersecretary pointed out, “are safe, effective and, in addition to protecting each person, they are an act of solidarity.”
More than 13.2 of the 19 million inhabitants of the country have already completed their vaccination scheme, of which 2.2 million who had been inoculated with Coronavac – the most used in the country – have already received a third dose.
A study by the University of Chile revealed last week showed that the Pfizer vaccine maintains the positivity of its IgG antibodies above 90% after 20 weeks of its application, while with the Sinovac formula a progressive drop is seen to around 40% in that time.
The pandemic, which had its most serious peak between last March and June and forced 90% of the population to be confined again, has been declining for weeks and this Monday there were 426 new cases and 21 deaths, which brings the total balance to 1 , 64 million infected and 37,253 deaths.
The positivity rate — the number of positive tests out of the total performed — has been below 1% for weeks and there are currently only half a thousand patients admitted to intensive care, compared to almost 4,000 in the most critical months.
The authorities, however, maintain the curfew from 00:00 to 05:00 and the closure of borders for tourists since last April.