However, the pandemic has hardly diminished. Last week, Chile broke records in the number of daily cases since the start of the pandemic on two consecutive days: 8,195 new cases of Covid-19 on Thursday and 9,171 on Friday. And while the number of new cases diagnosed daily has dropped this week, the reality is that an increase that began in December has continued steadily in Chile.
As of Wednesday, Chile was approaching 1.1 million cases of Covid-19. About 25,000 people had died from the disease, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. What went wrong?
Health officials, experts and journalists consulted by CNN say the world can learn a lot from a multifactorial “perfect storm” that hit Chile from Christmas gatherings and New Year’s Eve festivities, a push sustained to reopen all schools and malls, sense of early security given the rapid pace of vaccinations and the less desired levels of efficacy of the Sinovac vaccine, which has been widely used in the country.
Francisco Alvarez, a public health expert and, until recently, director of the health department of the province of Valparaiso, Chile’s second most populous, says the relaxing restrictions on Covid-19 around the end-of-year vacation they started it all.
“Just before Christmas, we would see whole families going to buy presents and there were crowds in the malls. From January, people were allowed to travel between provinces to go on vacation and the virus traveled with them,” Alvarez said. January is summer in the southern hemisphere and in Chile it is usually high season for domestic and international travel.
Alvarez, who had his own fight with the Covid-19 last summer and spent weeks in hospital, also said there would be crowds on the beaches of Valparaiso province, a top tourist destination and , even though his office organized mobile test sites, people would refuse to test you because “they didn’t want to bother you while they were on vacation.”
“People received two misleading messages: you can go on holiday to any part of the country or abroad and we are one of the most important countries in Latin America in terms of vaccination. People understood that the risk of contracting the virus it was probably over and relaxed action was taken. That created the perfect storm, “Alvarez said. He added that there were also many Chileans who traveled to Europe and other countries with a high incidence of cases, which contributed to the rise.
While in his former position at the Valparaiso health department, Alvarez’s office documented 60 infections of mostly young people who had attended the same clandestine New Year’s Eve party, when those meetings were still banned.
The establishment where the match was held was fined the equivalent of about $ 71,000. A young man who was unable to quarantine after testing positive for Covid-19 was fined the equivalent of about $ 35,000.
There were at least six clandestine parties attended mainly by young people visiting Santiago, the capital. This produced peaks of Covid-19 in a region that until then had had a relatively low number of cases. Infections among the local population also began to increase.
On Tuesday, Health Minister Enrique Paris said that while it is true that some measures were relaxed in December, he never told people to stop taking preventive measures. “We have been in quarantine for 14 days in the metropolitan region and we are seeing good results along with our vaccination efforts.”
“We never said that vaccination would be the only answer. We have to get vaccinated, but we also have to take into account other things like reduced mobility, wearing masks, washing our hands and social distancing because the virus does not spread. “Paris said.
While it is too early to say whether this contributed significantly to the rise in cases, high-profile cases in Chile of people vaccinated and who ended up in hospital with the disease have caused anxiety in the country.
Gao Fu, director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, has acknowledged the lower-than-ideal efficacy rate of Chinese Covid-19 vaccines, and said at a conference in Chengdu on Saturday that “protection rates for existing vaccines are not high ”.
However, the Coronavac vaccine is believed to be more effective in severe cases. Researchers at the Butantan Institute (Brazil) earlier this year confirmed the low overall effectiveness of Coronavac, but found that the vaccine was 78% effective in combating mild cases and 100% effective in moderate and severe cases. .
Izkia Siches, who heads the “Medical College,” Chile’s largest medical association, has been critical of the government’s response to the pandemic, saying it allowed people to travel during the holidays, which mixed messages from the top and lack of resources at local clinics added to the problem.
Paris, who has held office since June, later acknowledged that Chile “has made mistakes that have probably caused pain to many families. I apologize. We have done everything we can to do things in the best way possible.”
Christopher Ulloa of Santiago contributed to this report.