Chile has not achieved herd immunity despite full vaccination coverage of 80%

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Chile confirmed this Monday, August 2, four cases of community transmission of the Delta variant, a scenario that has worried the authorities and has led them to rule out that the country has reached “herd immunity” despite the sustained retreat of the pandemic in recent weeks.

“Herd immunity depends on two factors: one is that the immunization rate is high, and we are meeting that, and the other is the potency of the virus,” said Health Minister Enrique Paris.

Read also: Check out our coverage on Chile

“We are seeing what has happened in other countries in the world with the Delta variant, which is advancing very quickly, so it is necessary to increase even more the number of people vaccinated,” he added.

In total, there are 59 confirmed cases of the Delta variant in the country, the most contagious according to the World Health Organization (W.H.O.), of which 55 are related to travelers, and 4 are community-transmitted.

The country has deployed one of the best-organized immunization campaigns globally, reaching more than 80% of the target population with two doses and almost 87% with one injection, mostly from Coronavac and Pfizer AstraZeneca CanSino.

After a severe second wave that lasted from March to July and put the hospital system on the ropes, the pandemic has stabilized for more than a month and has retreated to levels of infection not seen since April 2020.

In the last 24 hours, the country added 921 new cases and 88 deaths, bringing the total pandemic toll to more than 1.6 million cases and 35,616 deaths.

The national PCR positivity rate has been below 3% for more than two weeks and in the last 24 hours was 1.47%, the lowest since records have been kept.

Active cases, meaning infections, have fallen to 7,504 in the last day, well below the more than 40,000 recorded during the second wave, and ICU patients dropped to 1,369 yesterday.

Despite the drastic improvement, authorities have maintained border closures for foreigners since April and a curfew from midnight to 5 AM in most parts of the country.