However, the pandemic has hardly subsided. Last week, Chile broke records for the daily number of cases since the beginning of the pandemic on two consecutive days: 8,195 new Covid-19 cases on Thursday and 9,171 on Friday. And while the number of newly diagnosed cases a day has dropped this week, the reality is that growth that began in December has continued steadily in Chile.
As of Wednesday, Chile was approaching 1.1 million total cases of Covid-19. Nearly 25,000 people had died of 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 much from a multifactorial “perfect storm” that has hit Chile since Christmas gatherings and New Year’s festivities, a sustained push to reopen all schools and centers. given the anticipated sense of security given the rapid pace of vaccinations and the lower-than-desired levels of efficacy of the Sinovac vaccine, which has been widely used in the country.
Francisco Álvarez, a public health expert and until recently the director of the health department in the province of Valparaíso, the second most populous in Chile, says the relaxing restrictions on Covid-19 around the end of the year have all begun.
“Even before Christmas, I saw whole families going to buy presents and there would be crowds at the malls. Since January, people have been allowed to travel between provinces to go on vacation, and the virus has traveled with them,” Alvarez said. . January is summer in the southern hemisphere and Chile is usually the peak season for domestic and international travel.
Alvarez, who had his own fight with Covid-19 last summer and spent weeks in hospital, also said there will be crowds on the beaches of Valparaíso province, a top tourist destination, and even though his office has run test sites. mobile, people will refuse to be tested because “they didn’t want to be disturbed during the holidays”.
“People have received two misleading messages: you can go on holiday anywhere in the country or abroad and we are one of the top countries in Latin America in terms of vaccination. People understood that the risk of contracting the virus was probably outweighed and relaxed measures. This created the perfect storm, “said Alvarez. He added that there were many Chileans who traveled to Europe and other countries with an incidence. high levels of cases, which contributed to the increase.
While at his former post in the health department in Valparaíso, Álvarez’s office documented 60 infections of young people who had attended the same clandestine New Year’s Eve party, when such gatherings were still banned.
The unit where the party took place was fined the equivalent of about $ 71,000. A young man who failed to put himself in 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 Covid-19 peaks in a region that had previously had a relatively low number of cases. Infections among locals also began to increase.
On Tuesday, the Minister of Health, Enrique Paris, said that, although it is true that some measures were relaxed in December, he never told people not to follow preventive measures. “We have been quarantined in the metropolitan area for 14 days and we are seeing good results along with our vaccination efforts.”
“I have never said that vaccination will be the only answer. We need to get vaccinated, but we also need to pay attention to other things, such as reduced mobility, wearing masks, washing hands and social distance, so that the virus does not spread. “Paris said.
Although it is too early to say whether this has significantly contributed to the increase in the number of cases, the high-profile cases in Chile of people who have been vaccinated and still arrive at the hospital with the disease have caused anxiety in the country.
Gao Fu, director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, acknowledged the lower-than-ideal effectiveness of Chinese Covid-19 vaccines, saying at a conference in Chengdu on Saturday that “protection rates for existing vaccines are not high.”
However, Coronavac is thought to be more effective in severe cases. Researchers at the Butantan Institute in Brazil earlier this year confirmed the low overall effectiveness of Coronavac, but found that the vaccine is 78% effective in combating mild cases and 100% effective in moderate and severe cases.
Izkia Siches, who runs the Colegio Médico, Chile’s largest medical association, criticized the government’s response to the pandemic, saying it allows people to travel during the holidays, mixed messages from the top and lack of resources in local clinics. .
Paris, who has been in office since June, later acknowledged that Chile “made mistakes that probably caused pain to many families. I apologize. I did my best to do things in the best way possible.”
Christopher Ulloa of Santiago contributed to this report.