Chile has administered about 5 million vaccine doses, nearly a quarter of its population. | Marcelo Hernandez/Getty Images

The Latin American country bet big on vaccines and relied on a strong primary health care network. Now, a quarter of the country has at least one shot.

Dr. Joxelin Flores Taborda, who is based in Santiago, Chile, got her second dose of Coronavac last week. She had a little headache afterward. But “a good headache,” she called it. “I was thinking, ‘The vaccine is doing something inside me.’”

Flores is a pediatrician who specializes in pulmonology. She and her colleagues who work in health care were among the first to receive vaccines at the start of Chile’s Covid-19 vaccination campaign in early February.

Since then, Chile has administered about 5 million vaccine doses, giving at least one shot to nearly a quarter