Chile sees over 7,000 daily Covid-19 cases, a 7-month high

Santiago, Jan 14 (IANS) Chile's Health Ministry has said it registered more than 7,000 Covid-19 cases in 24 hours, after detecting 7,291 infections in one day, the highest figure in seven months.

The new cases pushed the country's total caseload to 1,849,465, the Ministry added on Thursday.

On Thursday, 41 more patients died of causes related to the disease, bringing the pandemic death toll to 39,331, Xinhua news agency reported.

The Covid-19 positivity rate for Wednesday was 6.9 per cent nationwide and 7.39 per cent in the Santiago Metropolitan Region, the Ministry said, adding none of Chile's 16 regions had a positivity rate below 2 per cent.

Chile averaged 2,500 daily Covid-19 infections in December 2021, but the spread of the Omicron variant of coronavirus in January has pushed the average to 5,000 cases per day.

Meanwhile, Chile began applying a second booster dose of the vaccine against Covid-19 in January, aiming to increase the population's protection against Omicron amid the tourism summer season in the southern Hemisphere.