Chile once again exceeds 4,000 new cases of Coronavirus one day after the start of School classes

On the eve of the start of the school year and with thousands of citizens returning to Santiago after the end of the summer holidays, Chile this Sunday for the fourth consecutive day exceeded 4,000 new cases of coronavirus covid-19.

The authorities reported that in the last 24 hours there were 4,208 cases and 96 deaths, which leaves the total balance since the pandemic began a year ago in 825,625 infected and 20,572 deaths.

The regions of Valparaíso (center), Metropolitana (to which the capital belongs) and Biobío (center-south) are those that show a greater increase in new cases, although in the last two weeks nine of the 16 regions of the country decreased their new infections.

“We want to recognize the efforts of the inhabitants of these regions who, together with their local authorities and health personnel, have managed to reduce new infections by over 20% after 14 days”, said the Minister of Health, Enrique Paris.

Chile A second wave of the pandemic has been living since the middle of last December that coincides with the summer season and that in recent days had shown signs of stabilizing, with new cases per day around 3,000 and without great ups and downs in the number of deaths.

To date, 1,654 people are hospitalized in intensive care units, of which 1,422 are on mechanical ventilation support, and 24,106 patients are in the active stage of the disease, which means that they can infect and is one of the figures highest in recent days.

The national rate of positivity – the number of infections detected for every 100 PCR tests performed – is 7.8%, after more than 53,000 tests have been performed in the last 24 hours, 9.3 million since the pandemic began.

Chile, with more than 3.2 million people who have received at least one dose, it is the country with the fastest progress in vaccination in Latin America.

Skill in negotiating vaccines, which has served to guarantee 35 million doses from various laboratories and the Covax platform of the World Health Organization (WHO), as well as the extensive network of primary care, are two of the key factors that have expedited immunization.

The Chilean Government’s plan involves immunizing the entire population at risk (about 5 million people) in the first quarter of 2021 and the rest of the target population (15 million) in the first six months of the year.