Coronavirus: Chile is speeding up its 4th dose schedule

Chile, one of the countries with the highest COVID-19 vaccination rates in the world, announced on Thursday that it was speeding up its fourth dose schedule.

The immunocompromised will be able to receive it from Monday, while from February 7 it will be eligible for people over the age of 55 who have received a third six months earlier.

With 87.2% of the population over the age of three fully immunized and 66.8% receiving a booster dose, Chile planned to start the fourth dose program next month.

But with 3,134 cases of SARS-CoV-2 in 24 hours, the highest number in six months, mainly attributed to the presence of the most contagious Omicron variant, President Sebastian Pinera considered it necessary to speed up the second booster program.

“Every person without full vaccination coverage is six times more likely to become infected and twenty times more likely to be in an intensive care unit in a hospital than someone who has received two booster doses,” Piniera told a news conference.

“Fortunately, although this variant is much more contagious, it causes fewer hospital admissions and is less lethal,” he added.

As of Wednesday, more than 44.7 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine had been administered in the country of 19 million people. The preparations of the Chinese pharmaceutical company Sinovac and the American-German consortium Pfizer / BioNTech are mainly used.

According to a study in Israel, where a second booster dose has been started, the fourth dose of Pfizer vaccine allows antibodies to increase fivefold one week after injection and protects against the “serious complications” of COVID-19.

SOURCE: AMPE