On Wednesday, January 11, 2023, an extraordinary session of the Chilean Academy of Medicine took place, to which Gabriel Rada, MD, Director and co-founder of Epistemonikos, was invited to speak.

The session was organized by Joaquín Montero, MD, Honorary Member of the Chilean Academy of Medicine, who also invited Marcelo Wolff, MD, and Professor Eduardo Arriagada. Emilio Roessler, MD, President of the Academy, introduced the meeting by noting that in the medical community there has been a "concern about the low number of vaccinations at this time, because of prejudice, and the reasons, one of them is undoubtedly pandemic fatigue". Roessler further indicated that "we will probably prepare a document to give to the health authorities so that they can take the corresponding measures".

The conference began with an introductory presentation by Montero, in which he expressed that "despite the evidence of the effectiveness of vaccines in preventing diseases and avoiding 2 to 3 million deaths per year, many people refuse to be vaccinated due to fear or doubts generated by lack of information". Adding that in Chile "there is still reluctance to the fifth dose campaign on the part of health personnel, we have had 20% of the personnel vaccinated since October". The family physician of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile also stated that "the Academy has a role to play, how can we become part of the communications of this pandemic".

Gabriel Rada: "information on the effects of each of the vaccines is accessible to all"

Immediately following Montero's presentation, Gabriel Rada, Associate Professor at the Faculty of Medicine of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and Director of the Epistemonikos Foundation, gave a presentation.

Rada referred to the evidence on COVID-19 and vaccine efficacy, in particular, a recent Cochrane systematic review using the COVID-19 L.OVE developed by Epistemonikos, of which he is co-author. In his presentation, the director of Epistemonikos expressed that "we already know the effects of each of the vaccines, and this information is accessible by anyone". In addition, he stressed that "based on dozens of studies with hundreds of thousands of patients, we can affirm that most vaccines reduce or, in the case of some vaccines, probably reduce the number of people who contract the disease and who contract severe COVID-19; for that the evidence is categorical. For some vaccines the evidence is of high certainty, that is, even if many new trials came out, it would not change, or has a negligible chance of changing."

Inmediatamente posterior a la presentación del Dr. Montero, siguió la presentación del Dr. Gabriel Rada, Profesor Asociado de la Facultad de Medicina de la Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile y director de Fundación Epistemonikos.