Chile reports lowest number of daily Covid infections since November

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Chile reported this Monday 1,015 new cases of covid-19, the lowest figure since last November, while the number of patients admitted to intensive care units fell below 2,000 for the first time in four months.

“The incidence of confirmed cases at 7 days reached 81 cases per 100,000 inhabitants,” said Chilean Health Minister Enrique Paris.

The total balance since the beginning of the pandemic thus stands at 1.6 million cases and 34,539 deaths, after registering 24 deaths in the last 24 hours.

The national positivity rate – number of positives per 100,000 PCR tests – was for the second consecutive day below 3% (2.9%) after more than 30,600 tests were performed.

The national positivity has been below 5% for two weeks, the threshold established by the World Health Organization (WHO) to consider the pandemic under control.

The number of patients hospitalized in intensive care has also dropped to 1,991 and the number of active cases, i.e. people who can currently transmit the virus, to 11,575.

“Covid patients account for 56% of the total number of patients in intensive care units, with admissions decreasing by 65%, from 243 in April to 74 in the July moving average,” Paris added.

Given the favorable epidemiological situation, since last Thursday the country has been facing the pandemic with less strict measures and greater advantages for those vaccinated, who can access gyms, theaters, cinemas and senior citizen centers.

In the metropolitan area of Santiago, where 8 of the country’s 19 million inhabitants live and where for months the pandemic was epicenter, the quarantine that has been in force for months on Saturdays and Sundays will be lifted as of this week.

Chile has deployed one of the most successful vaccination processes against covid-19 in the world, which to date has reached more than 85% of the target population with one dose and almost 11.6 million people with two injections, most of them with Coronavac, and to a lesser extent with Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Cansino.

The country, which maintains the curfew and the borders closed until July 25, is considering the application of a third dose in order to avoid outbreaks, especially after the arrival of the delta variant, of which almost twenty cases have already been confirmed.