Coronavirus: bad news for Mendoza comes from Chile

The Chilean Ministry of Health on Friday reported 5,325 new cases of COVID 19, the highest number since the most difficult phase of the pandemic, in June 2020, when infections reached nearly 7,000.

This registry would complicate the aspirations of the government of Mendoza, which is negotiating for the Casa Rosada to allow the entry of Chilean tourists vaccinated against COVID 19.

Rodolfo Suarez’s request has raised doubts among the national authorities, who are reluctant to grant the authorization. Therefore, the number of infected recorded in the last hours in Chile, the highest in eight months, could become an obstacle to Suarez’s demand.

Blame the Holidays

The Chilean authorities consider the number of infections, which breaks with the average of 4,000 recorded daily infections, reacts to the effects of summer vacation, which in February lived its central month.

“We are seeing the effect of the holidays, the virus has a 14 day incubation period and what we are seeing now are people who were infected in February and as we have seen in Europe, people caught it after vacation», Declared the Minister of Health Enrique Paris.

The official pointed out that, unlike what happened in the northern hemisphere after the summer vacation, in Chile he is already vaccinated and this could contain the situation. “We have over 26% of the population (inoculated), we hope that this vaccination, even if it is a dose, will reduce the increase in cases a bit,” he said.

Likewise, Paris insisted on the call to maintain self-care measures and to respect quarantines.

Adding this Friday’s report, the total number of people diagnosed with COVID 19 in Chile met 845450, of which 27,317 are in the active stage and 796,791 are recovered cases.

Regarding deaths, in the last 24 hours there have been 90 deaths due to causes associated with the disease, bringing the total number of deaths to 20,928 nationwide.

Health officials also reported that in the past 24 hours, the positivity rate – the number of infections detected for every 100 PCR tests performed – was 8.61%, after performing 60,720 tests on the last day.

In parallel, Chile leads mass vaccination campaign, leader in Latin America with nearly 3.9 million people vaccinated to date.

By negotiating in advance with various laboratories around the world, Chile has committed a total of 35 million doses that will be distributed through its vast network of primary care distributed throughout the national territory.

Chilean government’s plan passes vaccinate the entire population at risk (around 5 million people) in the first quarter of 2021 and the rest of the target population (15 million) in the first six months of the year.