Chile Set to Reach Herd Immunity Shortly

With 25% of its citizens already vaccinated, Chile is set to reach herd immunity far earlier than other Latin American countries.

The South American country has secured more doses of vaccines than required and is even donating vaccines to other countries in the region, including Paraguay and Ecuador.

The country of 15 million people has secured 35 million doses of vaccines, according to AP.

When it comes to vaccination, Chile is the “champion of Latin America, and globally it is just behind Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom,” the newswire added.

Chile started negotiations with vaccine developers way back in April last year, just a month after COVID-19 was declared a pandemic. However, it was December 2020 when it received its first batch of vaccines from US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer. All that it received was 21,000 doses, far fewer than it had hoped.

But in January this year, the country received 4 million doses of Sinovac vaccine from China. As a result, a massive inoculation program took off in February.

In the past couple of weeks,  almost 300,000 Chileans are getting jabs every day.

The Chilean government has attributed the success to its decision to negotiate early with vaccine developers. By June last year, it had already signed a contract with the Chinese vaccine maker.