The use of intensive care unit (ICU) beds in Chile reach its highest level to date, about 95 percent, due to the second wave of covid-19 that the country suffers, which this Friday reported 6,604 new infections, the third highest peak in all the pandemic.
Faced with this scenario, the authorities of Santiago they again imposed a total of forty from today both in the capital and in seven other municipalities, where 7.1 of the nearly 19 million inhabitants of the country live. Hospital availability has been declining, and the employment rate rose from 93.5 percent two weeks ago to 94.8 percent today, according to a joint report by the University of Chile, the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile and the University of Concepción, which states that the situation “is a matter of great concern”.
(You can read: Chile reports the highest number of critically ill patients in the entire pandemic)
“There is a very high occupancy of UCI beds that has continued to increase slowly but steadily,” the document notes, and reveals that the increase has been progressive since May last year, when there was the lowest UCI occupancy ( 62 percent), and which has now surpassed the highest record so far, which was last January (94 percent).
(Also: Chile becomes the fastest vaccinating country in the world)
The Minister of Health, Enrique ParisHe told the press on Friday that there are more occupied ICU beds than in the worst times of the pandemic in June last year, but that now “the beds occupied by patients with covid-19 are only 70 per cent. one percent of all ICU patients, so 30 percent are occupied by surgical patients, operated on for tumors.
The President of Chile, Sebastián Piñera, is already vaccinated against coronavirus.
Presidency of Chile. EFE
Paris also reported that “the occupancy of critical beds is 3,141, the highest figure recorded to date, of which 2,193 correspond to ICU, with 1,907 inpatients with mechanical ventilation support.”
The number of critical beds available nationwide is 201 at present.
The austral summer holidays plunged Chile into a second wave of covid-19 that increased the weekly average of new infections per day to 5,075, according to the university report.
With 6,604 cases reported by authorities on Friday, the total balance since the start of the pandemic it thus reached 918,053 cases and 22,087 deaths, after registering 99 deaths in the last 24 hours. The number of patients in the active stage of the disease, which means they can become infected, is at record highs, reaching 36,433.
Faced with the worsening situation, the authorities have been tightening measures in the capital region and other parts of the country, decreeing quarantines for the weekends in some places and total confinements in others.
The minister also said they are considering “hiring or calling to work officials from any health field who are already retired or who have received incentive to retire” to increase the staff working in the ICU.
He also reported that he has talked to clinics, university hospitals and institutional hospitals of the Armed Forces and the Carabinieri police force, and was confident that more beds will be available next week.
At the same time, Chile is moving forward with a vaccination plan that is so far one of the fastest in the world and has already managed to inoculate more than 5 million people, a figure that encompasses the entire at-risk population.
The next goal the government has set is to inoculate the rest of the target population before June (About 15 million people, out of a total population of 19 million).
EFE and AFP
More international news:
– Chilean baby received Chinese vaccine against covid by mistake
– Putin proposes to Joe Biden to hold a video call after he pulls
– A gunman is arrested in front of Kamala Harris’ house
AFP