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The authorities of the Ministry of Health were “very concerned” this Saturday about the 22% increase in new cases of covid-19 nationwide in the last week and asked the population to “extreme” protection measures in the face of the Christmas holidays.
“Unfortunately, the variation in confirmed cases at the national level shows an increase of 22% in the last 7 days. We are very concerned”, acknowledged the Minister of Health, Enrique Paris.
For the second day in a row, Chile registered more than 2,000 new cases a day, after several months of around a thousand daily infected, which shows that the pandemic is gaining strength again.
In the last 24 hours, 2,217 new cases and 50 deaths were registered, raising the total balance since the beginning of March to 583,354 infected and 16,101 in total deaths, to which should be added almost 5,000 deaths that are awaiting a PCR.
“The only vaccine we have so far is the mask, hand washing and physical distancing. Young people are transmitting the virus a lot,” said Paris.
The country authorized this week the Pfizer vaccine, the first 20,000 doses of which will arrive in December and will be used to inoculate health personnel. Mass vaccination is scheduled to take place during the first quarter of 2021.
“Among the Latin American countries, Chile is the country that has the most number of vaccines considered for its population,” said the official.
Santiago, which with seven million inhabitants was on the verge of sanitary collapse in June, had been in full gradual opening of the economy for three months, but last week it fell back to the second phase in the plan to return to normalcy designed by the Government, which involves quarantine on weekends and the closure of all non-essential businesses.
The Government will decide next week if it maintains the same mobility restrictions to the entire Metropolitan Region, to which the capital belongs, or if it lifts the measures in some neighborhoods during Christmas, although it already advanced this Saturday than in the rest of the country, the night curfew will be extended by two hours, until 2 in the morning.
With 6 million tests since March and 46,726 tests in the last 24 hours, Chile is the country that has taken the most tests per million inhabitants in the region and one of the first worldwide.
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