SANTIAGO: Sinovac's COVID-19 vaccine CoronaVac was 67% effective in preventing symptomatic infection in the first real-world study of the Chinese shot, the Chilean government said on Friday.

The vaccine was 85% effective in preventing hospitalizations and 80% effective in preventing deaths, the government said in a report prepared by the Chilean health ministry.

The release of the data makes Chile one of a handful of countries, including the United Kingdom and Israel, that have used inoculation campaigns to gather insights into how effective vaccines are outside controlled clinical trials and when faced with unpredictable variables in societies.

Israel's real-world study of the effectiveness of Pfizer's vaccine looked at the results among 1.2 million people, a mix of those who received the shot and those who did not.

Chile's study examined CoronaVac's effectiveness among 10.5 million people, again looking both at people who had been vaccinated and those who had not.

The data compares favorably to previous data released on CoronaVac's efficacy in clinical trials.

In early January, Brazilian researchers said CoronaVac had a "clinical efficacy" of 78% against "mild-to-severe" COVID-19 cases in late-stage trials. They later added in a group of "very mild" infections, and said general effectiveness was 50.4%.

Indonesia gave the vaccine emergency use approval based on interim data showing it was 65% effective.

In a Turkish trial, CoronaVac had an efficacy in preventing symptomatic infection of 83.5%, and 100% in preventing severe illness and hospitalization.