Chile: Negative record for second day with 24,037 cases of coronavirus

The Chilean Ministry of Health announced on Thursday that in the previous 24 hours, for the second consecutive day, a record 24,037 cases of SARS-CoV-2 were recorded and 47 patients died due to complications of COVID-19, amid an outbreak of the new coronavirus pandemic. the authorities attribute it to the “more contagious than all the previous ones”, as they put it, Omicron variant.

The number of infections has increased by 299% in just two weeks.

The death toll from a pandemic in Chile has risen to 39,594 dead from a total of 2,045,874 infections.

The test positive increased to 18.82% nationwide and to 19.06% in the metropolitan area of ​​the capital, Santiago. Experts expect the cases to reach as high as 40,000 a day in the coming weeks and are urging people to get a second booster dose of the vaccine.

However, the Ministry of Health notes that despite the record number of cases, there is no increase in the admission of patients in a serious to critical condition in hospitals. Although the number of so-called active cases has also reached an unprecedented level, at 76,778.

The wave of infections is recorded in Chile in the middle of the summer of the southern hemisphere and high tourist traffic.