A customer wearing mask orders at a cafe in Santiago, Chile, March 24, 2020. (Photo by Jorge Villegas/Xinhua)
On Sunday, President Sebastian Pinera, accompanied by Health Minister Jaime Manalich and Deputy Health Minister Arturo Zuniga, toured a new field hospital erected alongside Sotero del Rio Hospital in the capital Santiago and metropolitan area.
SANTIAGO, May 24 (Xinhua) -- Chile on Sunday said a total of 69,102 people have tested positive for the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) and the death toll has reached 718.
The Health Ministry's latest report showed 3,709 new cases of infection were detected in the previous 24 hours, with the vast majority -- 3,343 -- displaying symptoms.
In the past 24-hour period, 45 more patients died of the disease.
Chile has been working to strengthen its healthcare infrastructure to deal with the increase in admissions due to the outbreak.
On Sunday, President Sebastian Pinera, accompanied by Health Minister Jaime Manalich and Deputy Health Minister Arturo Zuniga, toured a new field hospital erected alongside Sotero del Rio Hospital in the capital Santiago and metropolitan area.
The field hospital is the first of five temporary facilities to be erected by the government to alleviate the burden on standard hospitals. The temporary units are designed to attend to non-COVID-19 patients who would otherwise be occupying needed hospital beds.
Some 13.7 million U.S. dollars was invested in the first facility, which provides an additional 100 beds in a 1,500-square-meter area covered in tents, and will be fully operational by June.
"The great advantage of installing field hospitals in the metropolitan area, where we have the most need and demand for critical-care beds, is that it avoids having to displace patients and allows us to care for them as close to their homes and their families as possible," Pinera said.
According to Zuniga, the nation's hospital beds are currently at 85 percent capacity. ■