Chile finished second week with less than 1,000 daily COVID-19 cases

Chile added 607 new cases of covid-19 this Saturday, which implies that the country has two weeks with less than 1,000 people infected per day and the pandemic continues to decline, despite the presence of the contagious delta variant.

The total balance since the start of the pandemic in March 2020 thus remains in 1.63 million people infected and 36,841 deaths, after registering 34 deaths in the last 24 hours.

While the national positivity rate – the percentage of people who tested positive for the infection among all who had a PCR test – was 1% and 2% in the metropolitan area, which houses the capital and where more than 8 of the country’s 19 million inhabitants.

A positivity rate lower than 5% for two consecutive weeks is one of the epidemiological criteria established by the World Health Organization (WHO) to consider the pandemic under control, a requirement that Chile has been fulfilling for weeks.

“One of the fundamental pillars of the health strategy that we have promoted is the trial. We have passed 20 million diagnostic tests performed“, said the Minister of Health, Enrique Paris.

Health authorities have also reported 4,206 active cases (against more than 40,000 people who could be contagious at the worst moments of the pandemic) and less than 724 patients in intensive care, a figure that had not been seen for a year and a half.

after a serious second wave that put the hospital system in the ropes between March and June, the pandemic is under control in Chile, although authorities maintain a curfew and border closures for tourists, being one of the last countries in the region to lift this restriction.

Improvement occurs in alongside one of the most successful vaccination campaigns in the world: over 13 million people have the full regimen (over 84% of the population susceptible to vaccination), mainly from China Coronavac manufactured by Sinovac, but also Pfizer, AstraZeneca and CanSino.

At the beginning of August, the third dose inoculation in people over 55 years of age who have already completed their vaccination with Coronavac and over a million people have already received the additional injection.

In this context, Chile was the scene on Thursday of the first rock concert at full capacity, as part of a scientific experiment. The return to recitals after 17 months was carried out with a negative PCR and a compulsory mask as an entrance and was baptized “La Música Ensaya”.

The study was in charge of the Chilean Society of Musical Authors and Performers (SCD) and the University of Chile Clinical Hospital, which seeks scientific conclusions to return to concerts and other cultural activities in times of covid.

With the paraphernalia of your favorite group and eager to return to dancing and humming hits among strangers, those who attended this experience in Santiago enjoyed an hour to the rhythm of the funk rock of Chancho en Piedra, a popular Chilean group who turned their followers into volunteers in a clinical trial that began at 8 a.m., in the dead of winter, with PCR at the hospital.

All those who tested negative had their nocturnal touch pass in a room also with sanitary protocols, and as the new era wants it, with masks and hydro-alcoholic gel handy.

(With information from EFE and AFP)

Read on: