RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – On Friday, Chile once again recorded more than 8,000 new cases of covid-19, one of the highest figures of the entire pandemic, and 98 deaths, bringing the total number of deaths to 29,696 since the beginning of the health crisis.
More than 1.4 million people were infected in the country after adding 8,273 new cases in the last 24 hours and recorded an occupancy rate in intensive care units that exceed 95%.
“There is a significant pressure in the emergency services, and there are areas where tacitly dawn in the morning full,” the coordinator of ICU beds of the Ministry of Health, Luis Castillo, told the local media.
The Metropolitan Region, which includes the capital, is the one experiencing the most critical situation, he added, with a hospital saturation of 96% and a positivity rate – number of positive PCR tests for every 100 tests performed – of 12%.
At the national level, positivity was slightly lower, at 10%, after more than 70,000 tests were carried out, bringing the total number of tests to more than 15 million since the beginning of the pandemic.
In parallel, Chile is carrying out one of the fastest vaccination processes globally: more than 53% of the target population has received 2 doses of the vaccine, and 72% have received a jab, equivalent to almost 11 of the 19 million inhabitants.
Despite rapid immunization, neither infections nor admissions to intensive care units are decreasing, which has led experts to point out flaws in the traceability strategy and an early lifting of restrictions.
In recent weeks, and after a slight improvement during the first days of May, the curfew was postponed by one hour, and a “mobility pass” was implemented, which grants greater freedoms to those vaccinated.
This card, which came into force last week, allows travel between regions -something prohibited for months- to all those who completed their vaccination more than two weeks ago, except those in quarantined neighborhoods.
Chile has maintained dozens of quarantined neighborhoods, armored borders until June 15, a curfew from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. (local time), and a state of emergency due to a catastrophe for more than a year.