Posted on 06/13/2021 5:08:30 PM PDT by redgolum
SANTIAGO, June 10 (Reuters) - Chilean health authorities announced a blanket lockdown across the capital Santiago on Thursday following some of the worst COVID-19 case numbers since the pandemic began, despite having fully vaccinated more than half its population.
The development, which will alarm authorities elsewhere who are debating how fast to reopen as vaccination campaigns gather steam, comes as Chile's confirmed daily caseload surged 17% in the past two weeks nationwide and 25% in the Metropolitan region that includes Santiago and is home to half the country's population.
Intensive care beds in the capital region are now at 98% capacity. Jose Luis Espinoza, the president of Chile's National Federation of Nursing Associations (FENASENF), said his members were "on the verge of collapse."
Chile has one of the world's highest vaccination rates. Around 75% of its 15 million target population have already received at least one dose of vaccine, and nearly 58% are completely inoculated. On a per capita basis among larger countries, it the vaccination leader in the Americas and the fifth highest worldwide, according to Reuters data.
It has used nearly 23 million vaccines doses so far - 17.2 million of Sinovac's, 4.6 million of Pfizer /BioNTech's, and less than 1 million each of AstraZeneca's< AZN.L> and CanSino's.
Vaccines are not 100% effective, medical experts pointed out, and there is a time lag before they reach their highest efficacy. Also driving the fierce second wave is lockdown fatigue and the appearance of more contagious variants.
Of 7,716 people confirmed as infected with COVID-19 between Wednesday and Thursday, 73% had not been fully inoculated and 74% were under 49 years old, the health ministry said.
Dr. Cesar Cortes, emergency physician at the University of Chile hospital, said people who stayed home last year were now more afraid of being without work.
"Last year, there was low circulation and the confinement measures were more effective because people were scared of dying," he said. "That's not happening now."
Without its vaccines, Chile would be far worse off, he said.
"The complicated situation we are seeing now would be catastrophic," he said.
Chile's health regulator, the ISP, said genome sequencing of infections between December and June had confirmed the Brazilian P1 variant was the most prevalent in the country, and "twice as contagious as the original strain."
Chile is now embarking on vaccinating teenagers, having offered jabs to older age groups. Two weeks ago it introduced green cards to confer greater freedom on the vaccinated in an attempt to encourage the wary to come forward.
An infectious disease specialist at a large Santiago hospital, who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak officially, said vaccines could not completely relieve the overburdened hospitals.
"Around 10% of people, even if they are vaccinated, will not be protected against serious illness. That's hundreds of thousands of people going to ICUs," he said. "And when our health system is strained to the limit as it is now, that percentage alone is enough to overwhelm them." (Reporting by Aislinn Laing and Gabriela Donoso, writing by Aislinn Laing and Fabian Cambero; Editing by Rosalba O'Brien)
Best to do Christmas shopping on line...for many reasons.
Covid cooties the least among them.
Maybe they’re the cause?
This is not over. Everyone thinks it is but I’m hearing from people that are getting it and being hit hard, knocked down with terrible aches and extreme difficulty breathing.
Yep.
Isn’t it Fall and Winter coming on down there?
Sinovac is crap. I’ll bet very few people who had both doses of Pfizer or Moderna got sick. Those were developed in advanced countries, and actually work.
If China wanted to release a new strain into the wild, all they would have to do is load live virus into their vaccines.
“ pay attention, this may be a preview of the U.S. in November-December”
I’m very concerned about that.
But they call SinoVac a vaccine.
If they call it a vaccine it must be a good thing. Also, it must work well and keep people from getting sick with COVID-19 and not at all never cause any unpleasant side effects or or kill those who take it.
By definition.
Plannedmic Puritanism may be the final battle in the “war on Christmas” in the northern hemisphere.
The media is setting up to shut us down again. Hopefully, this time we will give the media what it has truly deserved for the past 18 months.
Let us imagine what we can do.
Terrible food? Contaminated water supply? Ghastly air? Stupid med schools? Misdiagnosis?
What the heck is going on there?
Sinovac is crap. I’ll bet very few people who had both doses of Pfizer or Moderna got sick. Those were developed in advanced countries, and actually work.
———-
The latest EU and US VAERS shows 14,000 died from the vaccines in the EU, 6,000 recorded in the US...No outrage? ...because no reporting.
Sinovac. Not a good vaccine. Seems to make the disease spread faster.
“Best to do Christmas shopping on line...for many reasons.”
I dunno. It got so bad last year, people were getting mugged on the checkout page at Amazon!
Stop relying on PCR rests and variants
They are wholly unreliable as they are not effective at determining an actual infection or viral load
Intensive care beds in the capital region are now at 98% capacity. Jose Luis Espinoza, the president of Chile’s National Federation of Nursing Associations (FENASENF), said his members were “on the verge of collapse.”
“died from the vaccines”
Correction - died with a temporal association with the vaccine.
To state otherwise misrepresents the data.
It’s worse than that. If you look at the graphs done in countries around the world, they were on decline and then vaccinations started and cases jumped and so did death rates.
Is it possible that vaccines are being altered? I can see the potential for dosages being adulterated in order to increase profits. Vaccine cartels?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.