Sinovac, Pfizer/BioNtech Covid-19 vaccines prove highly effective in Uruguay
Uruguay on Tuesday released real-world data on the impact of Sinovac Biotech's Covid-19 vaccine among its population that showed it was over 90 percent effective in preventing intensive care admissions and deaths.
The shot reduced deaths by 95 percent and intensive care admissions by 92 percent, and also showed 61 percent efficacy in cutting coronavirus infections, the government said...
Uruguay on Tuesday released real-world data on the impact of Sinovac Biotech's Covid-19 vaccine among its population that showed it was over 90 percent effective in preventing intensive care admissions and deaths.
The shot reduced deaths by 95 percent and intensive care admissions by 92 percent, and also showed 61 percent efficacy in cutting coronavirus infections, the government said.
A total of 795,684 people - health workers and members of the general population between the ages of 18 and 69 - at least 14 days after receiving their second dose of Sinovac's CoronaVac were compared to unvaccinated people to determine the real-world vaccine effectiveness, the government said in a report.
The government also studied the effectiveness of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine among 162,047 health workers and people over 80 years old. The shot was 94 percent effective at preventing intensive care unit admissions and deaths, and reduced infections by 78 percent, the report said.
Overall, intensive care hospitalisations and deaths from Covid-19 dropped by more than 90 percent among Uruguayans who were fully inoculated, the data showed.
The tiny Latin nation with a population of 3.5 million managed to largely hold Covid-19 at bay with a strict lockdown last year. This year, it has seen a spike in cases that in recent weeks propelled it to the ranks of countries with the highest Covid-19 death rates per million, according to Our World in Data figures.
So far, it has vaccinated almost 52 percent of its population with at least one dose of Covid-19 vaccine from Sinovac, Pfizer/BioNTech or AstraZeneca, received through the Covax vaccine alliance, while 29 percent had been fully vaccinated, between the end of February and June 1, according to Ministry of Health data.
Uruguay has registered 318,783 cases of Covid-19 since March 2020 and 4,692 associated deaths.
- Reuters
