The Chilean Government yesterday called on the population to continue getting vaccinated to prevent the spread of COVID-19, following the World Health Organization (WHO) announcement of the end of the global health emergency.
The Minister of Health, Ximena Aguilera, stressed the importance of maintaining care measures, such as inoculation, to avoid respiratory diseases in this autumn-winter season.
“Vaccination is for a virus that is already living with us. Therefore, we continue to call on people to complete their vaccination coverage,” Aguilera said at a press conference.
The minister pointed out that since last October, Chile has been in a phase of “openness” with the normalization of activities “thanks to vaccination coverage and the fact that our health system was not under greater stress”.
In the context of the end of the global pandemic, Aguilera affirmed that she would summon the National Pandemic Response Council (CNRP) to analyze the adequacy of measures in this new scenario.
“Most probably all the border measures are those that will cease to have effect”, said the authority.
However, he assured that the Andean country maintains the sanitary alert in force.
“Concretely, the alert is not a health alert only for COVID-19. It includes other respiratory viruses, such as avian flu, which is still with us. For which we also have to have resources and extraordinary measures,” the official explained.
According to official figures, Chile registered more than six million people infected with COVID-19 during the pandemic, of which more than 60,000 died.
The WHO said today that the COVID-19 pandemic no longer constitutes a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC), the highest alert level for the entity.