Chile lifts the curfew after 19 months of a state of catastrophe due to coronavirus

The government of Chile reported on Monday its decision not to renew from next October 1 the state of catastrophe decreed as a result of the covid-19 pandemic, a provision that supposes the elimination of the curfew under which the country has remained since March 2020.

This resolution comes shortly after the authorities announced the reopening of borders to the entry of vaccinated foreigners as of October 1, after several weeks registering a significant decrease in cases and a national positivity rate that to date stands at 1 %.

“It is vitally important that we are all fully aware that the pandemic is not over and, consequently, we have to continue taking care of our health and our lives, adopting personal care (…) and continue with the mass vaccination process”, Chilean President Sebastián Piñera said in a video message.

Without the current state of exception, there will be no more regional or community quarantines throughout the country, although measures such as the isolation of positives, close contacts, suspects and travelers will be maintained, as well as limitations in capacity depending on the epidemiological situation.

In this sense, the Undersecretary of Public Health, Paula Daza, emphasized that these provisions are covered by the country’s Health Code and the current Health Alert, “which provides extraordinary powers to prevent the spread of the virus and avoid this emergency.”

The Ministry of Health insisted on the need to continue with self-care measures such as the use of masks and physical distancing and reported changes in the so-called “Step by Step Plan” that marks the level of sanitary restrictions according to the state of the pandemic in each area of ​​the country.

From four initial stages, the gradual pandemic control plan will now have five, changing the first phase from “Quarantine” to one of “Restriction”, the most prohibitive in terms of allowed capacity.

It is followed by the phases of “Transition”, “Preparation,” Initial Opening “and” Advanced Opening “and in all of them all activities are allowed with limited capacity depending on the level of contagion.

These announcements come in an epidemiological scenario that the same authorities have classified as “favorable”, although this Monday the daily report showed an increase in cases equivalent to 45% in the last seven days.

Today 640 new infections by SARS-CoV-2 were reported nationwide, raising the number of infected to 1.6 million since the beginning of the emergency in March 2020.

To date, 380 people are hospitalized in intensive care units (ICU), of which 287 remain on mechanical ventilation support.

Chile currently has 4,526 patients in the active stage of the disease, that is, with the capacity to spread the virus, and in the last 24 hours five deaths were reported by covid-19, reaching a total of 37,445.

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