The health minister of Chile, Enrique Paris, said on 1 March 2021 that Chile plans to ramp up its purchase of COVID-19 vaccines from China's Sinovac Biotech Ltd (Sinovac) and hopes to sign a deal shortly with Johnson & Johnson, Reuters news agency reported on Tuesday.

Paris said new talks with Sinovac were progressing quickly and that Chile was negotiating a "significant increase" over and above the 10 million vaccine doses that Sinovac had already promised the country.

According to Paris, officials were also discussing contract details with US pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson and seeking to firm up a date for initial shipments.

"If Johnson & Johnson cannot move forward with (shipments) ... we will have to continue negotiating hard with other companies," Paris was quoted as saying.

Reportedly, Chile will soon receive the first batch of 890,000 doses of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine through the global COVAX programme.

According to officials, Chile has already inoculated 3.35 million of its 19 million citizens against COVID-19.

There have been 20,660 COVID-19 deaths in Chile and more than 825,000 cases.