It was on March 3, 2020 when a 33-year-old doctor, originally from the Maule Region, who had made a trip to Southeast Asia, where he contracted the disease, tested positive for the new coronavirus in a PCR analysis carried out in the city of Concepción. .
From then on, the number of infections began to grow rapidly, which led the authorities to establish restrictive measures, such as the rigorous isolation of the sick, the mandatory use of masks, and social distancing.
The Government of then-President Sebastián Piñera recognized that the country was facing the greatest health challenge of the last 100 years and in order to contain the emergency, curfews and quarantines were decreed in various places, including the capital.
Given the wave of new cases, on May 15, 2020, a total quarantine was applied in the city of Santiago and gradually other areas of the Metropolitan Region were added, including Melipilla, El Monte, Talagante, San José del Maipo, Peñaflor and curacavi.
In total, 46 of the 52 communes in the area entered this stage of total isolation and the situation of Santiago Centro Norte is emblematic, where the measure lasted more than 100 days, with a radical and sometimes traumatic change. , in people’s life.
Finally, on August 18 of that year, the end of the quarantines was decreed, but things were still far from improving.
An account made by the Ministry of Health with the title “Book Covid-19 in Chile Pandemic 2020-2022” indicates that in March 2021 there was a second stage of infections in the country.
The third wave, the text specifies, was due to the entry of the Ómicron variant and in this framework the day with the most cases in the history of Chile occurred, with 38,446 new infections on February 11, 2022.
By then, the massive vaccination programs were already underway, the first two doses of which covered more than 90 percent of the population and allowed a gradual decrease in the number of patients and fatalities.
At the end of September 2022, the Government announced the end of various restrictions, including the mandatory use of sanitary masks, the limitation of the number of people in closed places and the end of the mobility pass where the vaccines received were recorded.
From March 3, 2020 to March 2, 2023, 5,174,951 people contracted Covid-19, and 64,210 of them died.
The virus, however, is still present, as evidenced by the 2,807 infections and 13 deaths reported today by the Ministry of Health.
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