Chilean doctors warn society must prepare for “worst case scenario” – Telam

The president of the Faculty of Medicine of Chile (Colmed), Izkia Siches, warned this Sunday that society must prepare for “the most difficult scenario”, as the country continues to face an increase in coronavirus cases in recent weeks.

“We must prepare for the worst,” Siches anticipated, quoted by the newspapers El Mercurio and Cooperativa, but she preferred to be careful and stay away from the projections: “You have to measure each day and look at the numbers for each day, rather than making predictions which can end up with something totally different.”.

In the last days, Chile has seen an increase in Covid-19 cases after two months of decline.

On Saturday it reported nearly 750 infected people and just over 850 on Friday for the second day in a row; Figures like these were recorded in early August, when the average number of infections over the past seven days was 570.

As for deaths from the disease, nine were counted the day before, after the daily figure was 13 on Friday and Thursday 31. The average number of deaths in the past seven days is 13.

“As a country, we have to learn from these mistakes. This has happened to us twice already and it has cost us a lot of compatriot lives“, Declared the president of Colmed, adding that the country is” at the time of the greatest uncertainty “, so as not to know the “size that this wave is going to be”.

According to the doctor, they can be presented three scenarios: that of 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 wave worse than the previous ones, as happened in Southeast Asia and Africa.

Faced with the possibility of a new quarantine, Siches expressed that I hope they will not be reapplied, 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, this is something we cannot rule out“.

Regarding the vaccine acquisition, the expert pointed out that “doing negotiations very early was very fruitful and also the expansion in terms of critical bed care response ”, but He pointed out that government mistakes focus on governance and transparency.

As of September 24, Chile had vaccinated against the coronavirus at 79% of the population, or nearly 15 million inhabitants, at least with a dose, Meanwhile, he 74.4%, a little over 14 million, they had the full guideline.

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