Chile approves emergency use of Janssen vaccine against COVID-19

SANTIAGO - Chile on Thursday approved the emergency use of the Janssen vaccine made by Johnson & Johnson against the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19), as the South American country surpasses 1.4 million cases of infection.

The single-dose vaccine joins others being used by Chile to fight the pandemic, including those developed by pharmaceutical companies CanSino Biologics, Pfizer-BioNTech, Sinovac and AstraZeneca.

The Janssen vaccine was approved by the World Health Organization (WHO) and will soon enter Chile via the WHO's COVAX mechanism to distribute vaccines more fairly around the globe.

According to Chile's Institute of Public Health (ISP), the WHO evaluates the quality, safety and efficacy of vaccines against COVID-19 as a prerequisite to distribution through COVAX, which also seeks to expedite the development and manufacture of vaccines against the coronavirus.

The acting director of the institute, Heriberto Garcia, noted Janssen was authorized "by the world's top health organization, the WHO, which is also the body that grants accreditations to Regulatory Agencies of Medicines, such as the ISP."

Chile is tackling a rise in COVID-19 infections in recent weeks, despite fully vaccinating 56 percent of its target population of 15 million people, or 80 percent of the total, and 74 percent of the target population vaccinated with at least one dose.

According to the latest report from Chile's Ministry of Health, the country has registered 1,453,478 confirmed cases of infection since the onset of the outbreak here in March 2020, and 30,339 deaths from the disease.