SANTIAGO. “I prefer the puncture to being intubated,” said Cecilia Valenzuela, an 80-year-old woman who, like thousands of older adults throughout Chile, got up early yesterday to wait on soccer fields, skating rinks or medical centers for their vaccine against Covid 19.
Chile, one of the Latin American countries most affected during the first wave of the pandemic, began its mass vaccination plan – free and voluntary – for the general population during the day.
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After several days with about 4 thousand daily cases of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, the new infections decreased yesterday, the same day that the process with which it is intended to inoculate the 5 million people that make up the population at risk began. till March.
“Ten (of the 16) regions decreased their new cases in the last seven days, while seven did so in the last fourteen days,” said Health Minister Enrique Paris, who assured that in the last week new cases have down 8 percent.
In the last 24 hours, 2,616 new infections and 17 deaths were recorded, which leaves the total balance since last March in 736,645 infections and 18,876 deaths.
The regions of Coquimbo, Arica, Maule and Atacama are those with the highest increase in cases, while the southern regions Los Lagos, Magallanes and Los Ríos continue to have the highest incidence rates per 100 thousand inhabitants.
Chile has been plunged into a second wave since December, with daily case figures similar to those of the first major peak of the pandemic in June and July.
The objective is to vaccinate 15 of the 19 million inhabitants of Chile during the first half of the year.
Meanwhile, in Brazil, health workers traveled down the Amazon River to begin vaccinating riverside communities, bringing hope to a region hard hit by Covid-19 and now facing a lethal wave of a new variant of the virus. .
Dressed in masks and protective gowns, they traveled in an open boat from Manacapuru, a town located two hours from the jungle city of Manaus, where hospitals ran out of beds and oxygen last month and cemeteries were unable to dig graves with the fast enough to cope with the highest mortality rate in Brazil.
“I’m glad they came. We have lost so many old and young, ”said Maria Araujo, 83, after receiving a dose of a British vaccine made by the Serum Institute of India.
Brazil is struggling to access more vaccines to combat the world’s deadliest outbreak outside the United States. So far, it has vaccinated 2 million people, mostly Brazilian healthcare workers and elderly, with vaccines made by the Chinese company Sinovac Biotech Ltd and AstraZeneca Plc.
In Manaus, the capital of the state of Amazonas, where 2.1 million people live, more than 5,500 have died, that is, 261 per 100,000, the highest rate in Brazil, according to the Ministry of Health.
More than 600 thousand deaths from Covid-19 have been officially registered in Latin America and the Caribbean since the beginning of the pandemic. Brazil and Mexico account for half of the deaths in the region.
The COVAX vaccine distribution mechanism has allocated at least 330 million doses of vaccines for the poorest countries. India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Indonesia, Brazil and Bangladesh are the main countries to receive vaccines from the program.
