Chile opens sanitary residency to isolate COVID 19 patientes

Chilean President Sebastian Piñera announced Wednesday the creation of a network of residences to provide accomodation for people with COVID-19 to isolate, as cases continue to climb and the country's creaking health care system looks increasingly on the edge of collapse.

The Sanitary Network includes 66 spaces with more than 2,500 rooms. However, according to Piñera, "we are working to double this capacity in order to be able to take in more patients in these spaces".

Serious patients infected by coronavirus are collapsing the emergency services of Chile's hospital network, which is experiencing an avalanche of new infections on a daily basis.

The situation of Chile, with its growing number of newly infected people, is at the heart of the concerns of international medical bodies such as the World Health Organization and the Pan American Health Organization.

The Panamerican Health Organization announced in their weekly press conference on Tuesday that Latin America has become the epicenter of the corona virus as surge of deaths in Brazil and in other Latin American countries can go till August and warned against easing of quarantine guidelines.

President Sebastián Piñera admitted on Wednesday that the public health service "is very close to its maximum capacity".

Chile has 2,400 critical use beds, double the number in March, and plans to reach 4,800 by the end of June. However, every day there is a flood of new infections, with around 4,000 a day, although their lethality remains at 1%.

As a result, the emergency care and intensive care units in public hospitals are stretched to the limit by the high number of patients they receive day and night, in a country where 82,289 people have been confirmed to be infected, and 841 were reported to have died.

And the number of infections is thought to be far higher because many people have not been tested, and studies suggest people can be infected with the virus without feeling sick.