In the context of the sustained drop in the number of positive cases and the start of the vaccination campaign for children aged 6 to 11 years, Minister Enrique Paris spoke to international correspondents about the progress and challenges facing the country in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic.
On the eve of the national holiday celebrations, the Minister of Health, Enrique Paris, led a meeting organized by Imagen de Chile with foreign correspondents and international press, in order to provide a balance of the vaccination process, improvements in the figures, the start of the vaccination campaign in children, and to announce the measures that will be implemented during the national holidays.
"This Monday we start vaccinating children between 6 and 11 years of age, starting with children who today have some kind of comorbidity. Once they return to school, and I imagine that the same thing will happen in several countries, it will be easier to go to schools to vaccinate them, for which we will take the vaccination teams to the schools", said the Minister of Health.
Regarding a possible resurgence after the national holidays, the minister assured that the essential thing is to think that the more freedom, the more responsibility, and that testing and vaccination will continue to be actively carried out throughout Chile. "If people do not take care of themselves for these national holidays, it is evident that we could face a resurgence of cases. In view of this, we have prepared a series of measures, such as maintaining the staffing of hospitals and medical centers, the design of a special testing system for national holidays, including night-time testing, and we are going to promote the active search for cases with cell phones that will go to the places where there is a greater agglomeration of people, not only in the Metropolitan Region, but also throughout Chile", he said.
For her part, the executive director of Imagen de Chile, Constanza Cea, highlighted the high vaccination rate, stressing that it is still too early to relax the measures. "We know that, with more than 13 million people with the complete vaccination schedule, Chile continues to excel with this plan to face the pandemic. We see that there is very encouraging news, which does not mean that we have to lower our guard", said Constanza Cea, highlighting the role played by the press in communication in times of pandemic.
"We understand that it has been a long process and that we will probably have to learn to live with the disease. The important thing is that Chile has been able to keep people at the center and we continue to make progress in the fight against the pandemic," said Cea.
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