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It was about time. The new strain of the coronavirus is already in Chile. It was a Chilean citizen who spent three weeks in the United Kingdom and Dubai, who arrived in the country on December 22 and, after doing a PCR, it was confirmed that she was infected with the new variant of covid-19.
The news has generated reactions and criticism, especially due to the little control that has existed regarding the entry and exit of Chilean and foreign citizens from the national territory, a situation that contrasts with the strong restrictive measures that have been applied mainly in the Metropolitan Region. where it is not possible to travel to another region, except for very specific exceptions.
In this regard, infectologist and academic of the School of Medicine of the Austral University, Alberto Fica, said to The counter that “the epidemiological situation of covid-19 in Chile is bad in every sense of the word. We are in the emergence of the second wave, and epidemiological control measures in Chile have been relaxed, not because of epidemiological improvement, but because of a superposition of the economic part on the epidemiological criteria “.
Regarding the arrival in Chile of the British strain of the virus, he maintained that it was something that was going to happen sooner or later and that “it overcomes a very weak epidemiological control. Therefore, any regulation that appears on travel is only tangential to the problem. The problem is not the regulations on international travel, but the terrible epidemiological control design that already exists. “
“Nowhere in the world are regulations made by communes, but quarantines or broad restrictions are made in entire regions,” he criticized, referring to the quarantine model that has been applied in the country, in which certain municipalities may have more or less less restrictions.
Along these lines, he pointed out that “in Chile there is a model of creative control, Creole, without scientific basis that is based on communes, pretending that the virus travels only in certain neighborhoods and does not jump from commune, or that it only travels on Mondays to Friday and is paralyzed on weekends (…) that design is only a Creole invention that has no basis or support “.
“There is an epidemiological denial. It seems that Trump or Bolsonaro are really ruling the country,” he added.
Regarding the steps to follow and given the announcement of new measures by the Ministry of Health in the coming days, Fica considered that “we have a panorama with a deficit control of the pandemic and there is a risk of reintroduction in multiple points of strains extremely If a poor epidemiological control is combined with a more transmissible strain, there are only two logical control paths. The first is to return to an intense and prolonged general quarantine, and the second, which can be in combination with the previous one, is accelerate the immunization program of the population “.
Colmed for the arrival of a new strain: “It was quite predictable”
On the other hand, the National Secretary of the Medical College, José Miguel Bernucci, said that the arrival of the British strain to the country “was something quite predictable, mainly because the strain had already been found in different countries of Europe, and the border closure that had taken place in our country had only been a partial closure for flights coming directly from Australia and not from the rest of the countries where the strain had been found, such as Spain and France. “
“We believe that we have lost a new opportunity to cut the chain of contagion for this new strain. The truth is that it is not good news,” he added.
He also commented that “what we do need to know is that although we know that it produces an increase in contagiousness, it is still not clear whether this leads to an increase in mortality and hospitalizations, or the requirement of patients on mechanical ventilators. It is a strain that We are still learning and we still do not know the scope, therefore we hope that the authorities can take the necessary safeguards to be able to cut the chain of transmission of this new strain in our country. “
The need for increased controls
Meanwhile, the President of the Health Commission of the Chamber of Deputies, Ricardo Celis (PPD), stated that “the arrival in the country of a person infected with a highly contagious strain, which has meant exceptional measures in Great Britain and in different countries of Europe, and that reaches Panguipulli in the Los Ríos region directly, speaks of the need to increase controls on people entering the country, or to carry out different controls at border points and on the arrival of people from other latitudes in Santiago. “
“This is an alert point in the sense that Chile must prepare to receive people who are going to come infected and are probably already becoming infected in the country with different strains of coronavirus,” he added.
Finally, he stated that “there is a question here that remains pending, which has to do with the effectiveness of the vaccination with Pfizer that is being carried out in Chile, and this variant. I think it is an answer that should be prepared in Chile regarding the need to establish special public policies for that purpose “.
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