@AzulOscuro - Being an authoritarian government system, China took draconian measures early on, seriously locking people down to stop the spread. For example: To Stop The Spread Of Coronavirus, China Takes Drastic Steps : Goats and Soda : NPR . China also has used restrictive entry controls. They have mostly relied those measures and have focused more on exporting vaccines rather than mass vaccination. From what I have read, China is only recently stepping up internal vaccinations.

I also don't think we know everything about what has gone on in China as far as the case numbers. They definitely control what data gets out and there are a lot of doubts about their statistics. I think it's very likely that the strict measures they took controlled things more than elsewhere before the vaccines were even an option. However, it's still hard to know for sure what the real numbers from there are, especially in the earlier days of the pandemic.

Supposedly, one of the reasons they wanted to use Chile and other countries in the region to test their vaccines is that there are so many active cases floating around. If the lockdowns did reduce cases a lot in China, it would have been hard to run trials.

In this part of the world it would not be possible legally or culturally to enforce such strict measures. The restrictions in many cases are more on paper than in practice for many reasons, including lack of resources to enforce them, low levels of social support and a proliferation of permits to go out (wrongly classifying employees as essential workers, the mobility permit for the vaccinated, etc.). I think here, Uruguay, Mexico and other countries that have been vaccinating at a relatively high rate put all their bets on the vaccines because they don't see many other options. An important percentage of these are Sinovac. Uruguay is in the same boat as us.


I am so sorry to hear about your in-laws. The vaccine disparity is criminal.