RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Chile closes today a week in which the worsening of the health indicators of the Covid-19 disease has been the focus of attention, and the worries of the worst days of the pandemic have resurfaced.
The country is facing a second wave in which, almost daily, the number of deaths in the week exceeded 100, while the number of new cases appears in the statistics among the highest since the pandemic entered the country in March 2020.
To date, more than 918,000 people have been infected and 22,000 have died, data that keep Chile, due to the number of inhabitants, among the nations most affected by the coronavirus.
The authorities opted to return to quarantines as an extreme measure to contain SARS-CoV-2, and in the Metropolitan region alone, where this capital is located, nine communes went into total confinement on Thursday, and another eight did so this Saturday, March 20th.
This situation is replicated throughout the country, where more than half of Chileans are in quarantine, either on Saturdays, Sundays and holidays or for weeks at a time.
In order to enforce the quarantine on the population, exhausted of restrictions, 260 quarantine points have been created in the Metropolitan region and nationwide more than 60,000 Army personnel, Carabineros and Investigative Police will be dedicated to this task.
On an encouraging note, the Ministry of Health reported that as of Friday more than 5.5 million people had been vaccinated against Covid-19, at least with the first dose, in the mass immunization campaign which is progressing successfully.
But the Minister of Health, Enrique Paris, called to avoid triumphalism and urged to persevere in the sanitary norms, because the positive effects of the campaign will only begin to be appreciated from July onwards.
The increase in the number of active patients, meanwhile, is putting increasing pressure on the health system, and during the week several hospitals in the capital and other cities reported having all their beds occupied, despite efforts to increase capacity.
But the biggest problem lies, warned the Chilean Society of Intensive Care Medicine, in the lack of specialists in the intensive care units, whose personnel have been doing a titanic job for more than a year, but are already showing a high degree of exhaustion.
At the same time, more and more specialists consider that the Step by Step plan, established by the government months ago to return to normality, is now ineffective, and are calling for a change of strategy and more drastic measures.
Even Minister Paris announced that they are considering implementing again more control at the borders and, if necessary, limiting international flights.
And some voices are already beginning to raise the possibility of postponing the important April elections, although the government is inclined to keep them on schedule, so far.
Source: Cronica Digital