Why the pandemic is worsening in Chile despite the success of its vaccination campaign

Chilean authorities reported on Wednesday that the positivity rate -the number of COVID 19 infections detected per 100 PCR tests performed- rose to 11.01%, a fact that has not been recorded since the worst period of the pandemic, in June 2020.

The percentage was obtained from the results of 35,006 PCR tests carried out the day before and was accompanied by a count of 3,958 new infections, which are in the average of 4,000 daily cases recorded since the end of February, with peaks of over 5,000.

A positivity rate of less than 5% for two weeks monitoring is one of the epidemiological criteria established by the World Health Organization (WHO) to consider the pandemic under control.

These new records for Chile they are a consequence of summer vacation, which know their peak period in February, explained a few days ago of the Ministry of Health, and have motivated the major cities of the country to return to quarantine.

All this despite success of the vaccination process carried out by Chile, leader in Latin America and one of the best in the world, being with Israel the country that inoculates the fastest doses per 100 people, already reaching a dose to more than 4 million people out of the 19 million that the country has.

With data reported by the Ministry of Health 867,949 people have already been infected with COVID 19 in Chile since the start of the pandemic, of which 27,982 are in the active stage of the virus.

As for the deaths, the authorities have counted 24 others for causes related to the coronavirus, leaving the total at 21,206.

Intensive care beds

The daily report also reports that 1,881 people are hospitalized in intensive care units (ICU) -42 more than the day before, of which 1,609 are under mechanical ventilation.

At present, there are a total of 204 intensive care beds available for the patient who needs them across the country.

In view of this data, the president of the faculty of medicine, Izkia Siches, said that are “very concerned” about the current situation of the pandemicYes, if they only took the indicator of occupied beds in intensive care, “all of Chile should be in detention”.

“They are within their capacity, even with an expansion, already largely exceeded, of around 100%. We have always maintained that instead of continuing to increase critical beds, it was necessary to reduce the number of cases “Siches told local newspaper El Sur.

Quarantines

Given the rebound in cases that had known, since last Thursday the number of municipalities (sectors of cities or entire localities) for which the Ministry of Health has decreed quarantine.

Awaiting further announcements from the authorities, At the moment, quarantines are decreed for 244 municipalities out of the 346 in the country., between those who are in total confinement and those who only have this restriction on weekends.

If this amount is maintained, next weekend, 90% of the country’s population would be confined, as reflected by the local digital Emol information.