Chile lockdown after vaccine rollout
Nation faces record infections despite vaccination success
The disastrous experience of Chile shows that a quick coronavirus vaccine rollout may not be enough to avoid lockdowns, the UK’S chief medical officer warned yesterday.
Chile, which has one of the world’s quickest vaccination rates, has had to close its borders once again and tighten its lockdown after daily infection rates hit new records.
Medical experts in the country blamed its Government for causing cases to surge by reopening the economy too early as the vaccination programme forged ahead.
Professor Chris Whitty, England’s chief medical officer, said what had occurred in Chile contrasted with
Israel, which also achieved high vaccination levels rapidly, and where cases have plummeted. He said it was unclear whether the differences between the two countries were due to the timings of the vaccine rollouts, the vaccines used, or the emergence of coronavirus variants.
The UK has given a first vaccine dose to more than 31 million people, and Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, has faced calls to end lockdown quicker.
But Whitty urged a steady and cautious approach to easing restrictions.
He said: “We don’t yet know. We absolutely need to learn from those countries that are far ahead of us . . . or alongside us, in terms of vaccine roll-out, and those [Chile and Israel] are two of the key ones.
“This is the reason we want to do things in a steady way because the assumption that just because you vaccinate lots of people, then the problem goes away, I think Chile is quite a good corrective to that.”
Chile has fully vaccinated 20 per cent of its population of 19 million, well ahead of the UK.
Nearly half of Chileans have received at least one vaccine dose. Chile has mostly used the Chinese Sinovac vaccine.
Despite opposition from medical experts President Sebastia´n Pin˜era began reopening the country at speed. In January citizens were allowed to travel domestically and by March schools had reopened.
Chile had also been allowing in holidaymakers from abroad since November, potentially allowing new strains of the virus to enter the country.
Now, the morgue in the city of Valparaiso is full and bodies are reportedly being left in corridors. Daily cases across the country have reached 8000, eclipsing the previous peak of 5000 last June. Deaths have climbed more than 100 a day for the first time since then.
In response, Pin˜ era ordered a new lockdown covering 80 per cent of the population, including the capital Santiago.
The situation in Israel, which has a population of 9.3 million, has been markedly different. So far, 5.27 million Israelis over the age of 16 have received a first dose. Of those, 4.84 million have received a second shot and been fully vaccinated. It has primarily used the Pfizer/ Biontech vaccine, which is also in New Zealand.
The country’s health officials expect all those eligible for the vaccine to be inoculated by the end of May. About one third of Israelis are aged under 16 and ineligible for the vaccine until it is deemed safe for children. But Israel has reduced new cases to a few hundred a day, and deaths are below 20 per day.
As part of its reopening Israel introduced a “Green Pass” coronavirus passport allowing fully vaccinated people to use services including hotels and theatres.
— Telegraph Group Ltd