Chile detected British and Brazilian strains of COVID-19 and extended quarantine to the entire Santiago Metropolitan Region

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The Chilean health authorities announced on Thursday that they will extend the scope of the strict quarantine in force in most of the country to the entire capital region as of next Saturday, March 27 at 5 am, in view of the imminent advance of the second wave of the pandemic that threatens to collapse the health system.

In addition, the Minister of Health, Enrique París, informed in a press conference that the British strain of the coronavirus was detected in some patients and the Brazilian strain in other cases.

Most of the municipalities of Santiago were already facing sanitary restrictions, imposed as the number of cases increased after the austral summer vacations.

The total quarantine order in Santiago de Chile implies the confinement of its 52 municipalities and is the first time that the entire region will be under this regime since the beginning of the pandemic, explained CNN Chile.

With a total of 954,762 infections and 22,524 deaths due to SARS-CoV-2, Chile has been experiencing a second wave since last December, which worsened after February, the month of greatest mobility due to vacations.

In recent days, the country has reached historic highs in the number of daily cases, which on Thursday exceeded 7,000, and hospital capacity is in a critical situation, with ICU beds at 95% occupancy.

Read: The Chilean contradiction: Why does the success of vaccination not stop the pandemic?

On the other hand, Chile started in February an ambitious inoculation plan that has already reached more than six of the 19 million inhabitants with at least one dose, which makes it one of the fastest globally.

According to the latest data from Oxford University, the southern country is the third in the world with the highest percentage of the population inoculated, behind Israel and the United Arab Emirates, and is the fastest to vaccinate, with 1.4 doses per 100 inhabitants per day.

On Wednesday, the country received a new batch from Pfizer/BioNTech with almost 200,000 doses, which are added to the more than 12 million vaccines it has already obtained, mostly from the Chinese laboratory Sinovac, with the goal of meeting 35 million by 2021.

Chile has been in a state of emergency for more than a year due to a catastrophe and with a curfew between 22:00 and 5:00 hours.

Source: Infobae