Chile now has the fifth highest vaccination rate per capita in the world after Israel (79.48), the United Arab Emirates (53.43), the United Kingdom (24.3) and the United States (17.00).
By May 27, Chile, along with Peru, had reached the world’s highest infection rates per capita over a seven-day rolling average, according to Our World in Data (OWID), an independent statistics website headquartered at Oxford University. Chile was rapidly approaching 80,000 infections and more than 800 people had already died by then. Fast forward nine months and the Chile is in a totally different category. While some Latin American countries like Nicaragua have yet to receive any vaccine, the Andean nation of 19 million had already given more than one million vaccine doses by February 9th. It hit two-million Monday and the immunization pace continues to improve. With 12.43 people vaccinated for every 100 people, Chile now has the fifth highest vaccination rate per capita in the world after Israel (79.48), the United Arab Emirates (53.43), the United Kingdom (24.3) and the United States (17.00). It’s doing even better than the European Union (5.19) and China (2.82) and its rate is four times better than Brazil, which has the second best rate in Latin American (2.77), according to data from Oxford University’s „Our World in Data“ database. How was Chile able to turn things around so dramatically? First, its government decided very early on to spare no effort in acquiring a vaccine… any vaccine. The Chilean government has arranged for the purchase of 35.7 million doses so far, which means that it will have the ability to vaccinate more than 90 percent of its population. According to Chilean Health Minister Dr. Enrique Paris, the country has acquired or is in the process or receiving 10 million doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine and an additional 10 million from Sinovac.
