Specialists referred to the vaccination plan with a bivalent vaccine against covid, where they accused the slowness of the process and pointed to a “more aggressive communication strategy.”
The detection of the BF.7 variant of the coronavirus in Chile, which comes from China and is highly contagiousput the country’s health authorities on alert.
Although, the Ministry of Health announced a strengthening of tests at the borders for the detection of covid-19 infections, it has been more than a month since it added new groups to the vaccination plan with the annual bivalent dose against coronavirus.
Therefore, the inoculation plan continues to be aimed only at certain risk groups: people over 60 years of age, people with a chronic pathology from the age of 12, and health personnel, without considering other segments.
Bivalent vaccine against covid
Given the arrival of new strains in the national territory and an increase in daily cases, the infectologist at the Universidad de los Andes, Carlos Pérez, called for expanding the vaccination plan with the bivalent dose, which has greater protection against the variant. omicron.
“Indeed, we are going quite slowly in vaccinating with the bivalent vaccine against covid-19 that contains the Omicron variant,” said the specialist.
So also said he would consider both “a more aggressive communication strategy about the importance of this vaccination and extend it to the entire population.”
The dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences of the Autonomous University, Luis Castillo, argued that the low vaccination coverage with the bivalent dose could have an impact on an increase in infections in the country.
“With the low speed of the vaccination process with the bivalent vaccine, it could put you at risk of greater contagion, especially the population at risk. That is why it is so important to speed up this vaccination campaign (…)”, explained the academic.
Until the last balance of the Minsal, 1 million 124 thousand people have been immunized with the bivalent vaccine.
The epidemiologist and academic from the Department of Epidemiology and Health Studies of the University of the Andes, David Torres, argued that this figure is low and that not adding new groups to the vaccination plan is a strategy of the Minsal to avoid worsening their numbers.
“No new risk groups have been added and I think that is part of the Ministry’s strategy to not worsen their numberssince the risk groups that were originally established have a vaccination rate that is very low”, accused the specialist.
He also said that “globally, it should be around 20-25%, but it is much lower than the expectations that the Ministry itself had.”
In its latest balance, the Ministry of Health reported 2,467 new cases of coronavirus, with a positivity rate of 13.22%, and 43 deaths from causes associated with the pandemic at the national level.