Chile increasingly complicated by the coronavirus: c …

Carlos Van Buren Hospital in Valparaíso warned of collapsing mortuary Due to the increase in deaths from the coronavirus, which Chilean health authorities said was 17 people last Sunday. In addition, the region has 98% of intensive care beds occupied due to the increase in cases recorded in the second wave. Meanwhile, 70% of the country’s population is in quarantine.

“The morgue collapsed and unfortunately the hallways were activated (…) we have nine bodies of people who died from covid-19”the head of the National Federation of Health Workers of Valparaíso, Aron Neira, explained to the local press.

Seeing the storage capacity of bodies exceeded, the hospital left the deceased in a closed area of ​​its facilities, “maintaining the sanitary conditions and the dignity of the deceased”.

Likewise, hospital officials they called a refrigerated truck with the ability to store 12 bodies, to ease the burden of the morgue.

“Friday night there were more deaths than this mortuary could handle, from which the deceased leave each day and are returned to their families.”the director of the Valparaíso-San Antonio Health Service (SSVSA) told reporters. Eugenio de la Cerda.

“This weekend that we had the total closure of activities (due to the tightening of quarantine) the cemeteries were not even present and this generated a taco (traffic jam) when the deceased left“he added.

Regarding the photograph that circulated through the media in which several corpses were seen, covered and on their stretchers, in a corridor of the hospital, De la Cerda indicated that it is a place that has been fitted out annexed to the morgue with all the necessary measures to be done then.

This is not the first time that Chile has suffered a similar collapse. According to Raúl Delgadillo, leader of the National Federation of Health Workers (Fenats) of Valparaíso, a refrigerated truck was also needed in September 2020 due to lack of space at the hospital morgue.

“What is happening is that it is necessary to comply with the refrigeration, that it is fine, and all of this is a delay time and affects the times but the truth is that the hospital response was quick, ”said Delgadillo.

The region of Valparaíso, the second most populous in the country, this Sunday broke its record for daily infections by covid-19, detecting 880 new cases in the past 24 hours and reaching a total of 1,835 deaths since the start of the pandemic.

Likewise, the regional ministerial secretary of health, Georg Hubner, indicated that the region’s hospital capacity in terms of intensive care unit beds is 98% occupied.

Chile is severely affected by the second wave of the pandemic and, despite progress in the vaccination campaign, President Sebastián Piñera has decided to declare a new lockdown which began last Thursday and affected 70% of the population. The government’s goal is to stop the circulation of new variants of the virus in order to vaccinate the Chilean people.