exceeded 5,000 coronavirus cases for the second day in a row

The Ministry of Health announced this Saturday 5,037 cases of covid-19 and 80 deaths in the last 24 hours. Authorities reported 5,325 newly infected on Friday, a figure that had not been seen since last June at the height of the pandemic in Chile.

The Minister of Health, Enrique Paris, attributed this increase in cases to the fact that “there is a relaxation of the population” and stressed that there was a “social behavior which did not respect the health standards” adopted by the government to stop the pandemic during the summer vacation.

Amid the increase in cases, half of Santiago’s 7.1 million people are in quarantine on weekends.

Experts argue that this increase in cases is also due to the relaxation of the population due to the rapid and successful progress of the vaccination process in Chile, which began on December 24 with medical staff and from February 3 on a large scale. .

While the government estimates that by April 15 the effect of vaccines could be observed, experts insist that the vaccination process will not take effect until at least 80% of the population receives the second dose.

The Health Ministry reported on Saturday that more than four million of Chile’s 19 million people received the first dose. Meanwhile, 535,600 people were vaccinated after receiving the second dose.

The goal of the Chilean government is to vaccinate 5 million people with at least one dose by the end of March and 15 million before the first half of the year.

Since the first case of the coronavirus in Chile was confirmed on March 3, 2020, the pandemic has officially left 850,483 infected and more than 21,000 deaths.