They have decreed a total quarantine in nine municipalities of Santiago and 19 other regions of Chile due to the increase in COVID-19 infections

From Thursday, March 18 9 municipalities of Santiago and 19 other regions of Chile will return to total quarantine due to the sharp increase in COVID-19 cases that has taken place in the Andean country in recent days.

About 7.8 million people will be affected by the measure: 1.3 million from Santiago and over 6.5 million in the rest of the country.

The total confinement of the municipalities of the capital, which was no longer in force since November 15, will begin to take effect from 5 a.m. next Thursday.

According to the authorities, the communes which will begin the total confinement are Padre Hurtado, San Miguel, Renca, Isla de Maipo, Lo Prado, Quinta Normal, La Florida, Cerrillos and El Bosque.

The current health situation in Chile is deteriorating despite the accelerated vaccination process, which in recent hours has reached 5 million people vaccinated. Until Monday March 15 Chile crossed the 5,000 contagion mark for the fifth consecutive day.

Of the 900,782 cases detected across the country since the start of the pandemic, more than a third have occurred in the metropolitan area. Active cases currently stand at 9,882, while the death toll stands at 21,789, according to the latest count from Johns Hopkins University. 12,364 of them are concentrated only in the municipalities of the capital.

Between February 12 and March 12, 31 of the 52 municipalities in Chile’s capital have more than doubled the number of daily cases, while 8 zones they have more than triple.

The number of regions affected by confinement outside Santiago is 19. In them live just over 6.5 million people.

Warnings and Critics for Quarantine

This significant advance in contagion he had been warning since last February. On Monday February 22, the former Minister of Health Jaime Mañalich sounded the alarm bells by declaring that “When people come back from vacation, we will have a reappearance of cases.” In early March, Enrique Paris, current Minister of Health, declared that the 4,000 daily infections at the start of March were a “worrying increase”.

Experts, such as the ICovid Chile team, communicated on March 11 that 65% of the total increase in infections in the country was concentrated in the municipalities of the capital of Chile, and that the transmission rate has also remained at critical levels in this area, a situation which recurred in 14 of the 16 regions of the country.

Although with these numbers and warnings, full quarantine was expected, the criticisms of the municipal authorities were immediate. Among them is the mayor of the municipality of La Florida, Rodolfo Carter, who will see his territory in quarantine next Thursday.

“Obviously, a series of actions have been taken that are contradictory. For example, exceeding permits that have been granted in recent months, It gives them a relaxed situation in the community that it’s happened before and it’s not like that, it hasn’t happened yetCarter said.

The mayor of the municipality of El Bosque, Sadi Melo. The authority stated that the the increase in infections in its territory is due to the “holiday permits which widen the possibilities of mobility and back to work ”, in addition to vulnerable sectors,“ used phases 2 and 3 (of the government’s step-by-step plan) to recover resources and survive ”.

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