Chile once again exceeds 10,000 active cases of COVID-19

Health authorities chilean reported this Sunday the detection of 1,921 new infections by Covid-19 nationwide, once again exceeding 10,000 active cases in a context of rebound after the end of the year celebrations.

With this new report, the total number of people diagnosed with coronavirus in Chile amounts to more than 1.8 million since the start of the pandemic.

According to the Ministry of Health (Minsal), the omicron variant has become the second with the highest circulation after the delta, despite its recent appearance, during the last days of November.

The positivity rate, meanwhile, stood at 3.1% throughout the Chilean territory, the highest level since November 30; In the Metropolitan Region, however, which is home to the capital and where more than 7 million people live, the figure still stands at 3%, while in northern Tarapacá it shot up to 10%.

A positivity rate – the number of infections detected per 100 PCR tests performed – of less than 5% for two consecutive weeks is one of the epidemiological criteria established by the World Health Organization (WHO) to consider the pandemic controlled.

Chile shows a variation of 19% more cases in the last seven days and the Ministry of Health has already announced measures to contain an accelerated spread of the virus, considering the community transmission of omicron, which has already been confirmed.

One of them is to advance the second booster dose, originally announced by the Government for the second half of February, but now scheduled for this month, according to Health Minister Enrique Paris.

“If the entire Metropolitan Region (RM) continues to rise at the rate it is doing, we will probably have to take a measure, but that involves the entire RM (…) to prevent this from increasing, but I ask you responsibility to the people, ”Paris told a local television outlet.

To date, more than 10.6 million booster doses have already been administered in the country and 92.1% of the target population – about 15 million people – have the two-dose or full single dose scheme.

However, the more than 1.6 million people lagging behind in their booster vaccination will suffer mobility restrictions as announced by the Ministry of Health last month, in which they called to complete the inoculation process to those who have more than six months since their second dose.

In the last day, the Department of Statistics and Information (DEIS) of the Ministry of Health reported the death of 22 people due to serious conditions derived from SARS-CoV-2, raising the deaths since the beginning of the health emergency in March 2020 to 39,162 confirmed and exceeding 50,000 considering suspected cases.