Chile must “prepare for the most difficult scenario” due to the increase in coronavirus cases

The President of the Faculty of Medicine of Chile (Colmed), Izkia Siches, today warned that the company must prepare for “the most difficult scenario”, while the country continues to face an increase in coronavirus cases in recent weeks.

“You have to prepare for the worst”, Siches anticipated, quoted by the newspapers El Mercurio and Cooperativa, but preferred to be careful and move away from projections: “You have to measure every day. and looking at the numbers each day, rather than making predictions that might end up with something totally different. “

In the last days, Chile has seen an increase in Covid-19 cases after a two-month drop. Yesterday it reported nearly 750 infected people and just over 850 on Friday for the second day in a row; such figures had been recorded in early August.

Meanwhile, the average number of infections at the end seven days is 570.

With regard to deaths due to illness, yesterday nine were counted, after the daily figure was 13 on Friday and 31 on Thursday. The average number of deaths in the past seven days is 13.

“As a country we have to learn from these mistakes. It has happened to us twice already and it has cost the lives of a large number of compatriots,” Colmed President said, adding that the country is “at the time of the greatest uncertainty” because the “magnitude that this wave will be” is unknown.

According to the doctor, they can be presented three scenarios: collective immunity and that the wave passes without major impact; that of a panorama similar to that of Israel, England and the United States, with a wave that affects the vaccinated and the unvaccinated; that of a it’s worse than the previous ones, as happened in Southeast Asia and Africa.

Ante la possibility of a new quarantine, Siches expressed that he hopes they will no longer be applied, but added, “I understand that if we have an increase in cases, if the Delta variant hits us, and critical units have a significant increase, that’s something we can’t rule out.”

Regarding the acquisition of vaccines, the expert stressed that “making very early negotiations was very fruitful and also the expansion in terms of the care response of critical beds”, but He pointed out that the government’s mistakes focus on governance and transparency.

Al On September 24, Chile had vaccinated 79% of the population against the coronavirus, or nearly 15 million inhabitants, at least with one dose, while 74.4%, or just over 14 million, had the full guideline.

Since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic and until this Sunday, the country had accumulated more 1.65 million people infected and 37,423 deaths from the disease.