RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The coronavirus pandemic continues out of control in Chile, which this Friday, April 2, surpassed for the first time the barrier of 8,000 new cases per day and the number of patients in the active stage of the disease set a new record, with 45,202 people currently contagious.
Health authorities reported 8,112 new cases and 93 deaths in the last 24 hours, bringing the total since the start of the pandemic more than a year ago to more than 1 million people infected and 23,421 deaths, to which should be added more than 8,000 who have not yet been confirmed.
So far, the highest number of new infections was detected this Thursday (7,830), although for the last few days the country has been adding very similar data.
During the most critical months of the first wave, last June and July, new cases did not exceed 7,000.
“The variation of new confirmed cases at the national level is 11% and 29% in the last 7 and 14 days, respectively,” said the Minister of Health, Enrique Paris.
The positivity rate – the number of covid-19 infections detected per 100 PCR tests – in the last 24 hours was 10.7% at the national level and 12% in Santiago, both figures far from the 5% that the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends to maintain for two consecutive weeks to consider the pandemic under control.
The number of people admitted to intensive care units also reached an all-time high on Friday (2,804), while hospital occupancy in some regions of the country exceeds 95% and in total only 169 critical beds remain.
The virulence of the pandemic, in which the new Brazilian and British strains are playing a fundamental role, led the Chilean government to announce this Thursday the closing of borders for a month.
It was also decreed to bring forward the curfew to 21.00 hours, the restriction of economic activities that are of prime necessity and the limitation of individual permits that citizens can request to go out on the street during the quarantine.
At present, more than 83% of the population is under strict home confinement, although during the Easter holidays the quarantine will affect 97% of Chile’s 19 million inhabitants.
The worsening of the pandemic, which has forced the postponement of the April 11 elections to May, runs parallel to a successful vaccination process, thanks to which more than 6.8 million people have received at least one dose (3.7 million the two injections) and has placed Chile among the three countries in the world with the highest percentage of inoculated population.
Experts point out that the fast pace of vaccination could have worked against Chile and led the population to overconfidence, in addition to fatigue after a year of restrictions.