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Santiago (AFP)
Chile is a world leader in its coronavirus vaccination program and has already administered at least one dose to nearly a third of its population.
As of Thursday, the narrow South American nation, hemmed in by the Andes and the Pacific Ocean, had given more than six million people a single dose and 3.1 million both doses, including most older people over 70 years old.
And yet, on the same day, the government locked out more than 80% of the country’s 19 million people.
With new variants of the virus, considered more contagious, spreading across the continent, cases have exploded in Chile despite its vaccination campaign.
On Thursday, it surpassed 7,000 new cases in the past 24 hours: the second-highest daily figure on record.
“These are phenomena that work in totally different ways,” Darwin Acuna, president of the Chilean intensive medicine society, told AFP of the apparent disconnect between high rates of vaccination and contagion.
President Sebastian Pinera has urged the country to make “a last ditch effort” and authorities expect the vaccination campaign to start bearing fruit next month.
Health Minister Enrique Paris said the lockdown “is difficult but necessary”, especially in the metropolitan region of Santiago – the most populous in Chile.
The country has recorded more than 950,000 infections and more than 22,500 deaths from Covid.
– “ More aggressive ” wave –
Chile started vaccinating health workers on December 24 and from February 3 it started with the general population, initially those over 90 years old.
But a general loosening of attitudes in the country due to the vaccination campaign and the summer vacation, as well as the arrival of new viral variants, have pushed a new wave of infection.
“You can’t see the effect of the vaccine on the people most at risk yet, because for the people most at risk, they just got the second dose,” Acuna said.
He expects to see “a real effect on the need for intensive care beds for those most at risk” by mid-April.
Health officials say they have noticed a difference in the identity of people occupying intensive care beds since the first wave of the pandemic: patients are younger and sicker.
“It seems to be more aggressive than last year. There are patients who go directly to intensive care” and on oxygen, told AFP Hector Ugarte, chief medical officer of the critical adult patients unit of a hospital in the coastal town of Coquimbo.
The ages of those in need of hospital treatment have “dropped dramatically”, the health ministry said – because young people “weren’t careful”.
Authorities on Thursday said they had discovered 45 cases of the Brazilian variant of the novel coronavirus, having already detected the British variant in February.
Intensive care unit beds are 95% functional, even in places like Coquimbo, 460 kilometers north of Santiago.
Prior to March 2020 it had eight intensive care beds, but now there are 38 and this week 46 people had to be hospitalized for Covid-19.
– Optimism –
The government’s goal is to vaccinate 15 million people by June 30, thereby achieving coveted “herd immunity”, when a large enough proportion of the population is resistant to a pathogen they have nowhere to do. where to spread.
As of Thursday, authorities had given nearly 6.1 million people a first dose of Chinese CoronaVac or Pfizer injections.
Teachers, firefighters, the chronically ill, journalists, public sector workers, pharmacies and telecommunications workers have already received a first dose. Most healthcare workers and the elderly have had two.
Despite the high infection rates, there is a lot of optimism.
In a nursing home in southern Chile, where residents and staff received a first dose of vaccine during opening week in February, a subsequent outbreak of coronavirus at the facility has infected 70 people. The only death was a resident who had not been vaccinated.
There is also a lot of hope in hospitals.
“Now, with 80 percent of the staff having been fully immunized for a few weeks, there is one!” he added, calling it “the first big demonstration” of the vaccine’s impact.
© 2021 AFP
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