Chile exceeds 8,000 daily COVID-19 cases, one of peaks in pandemic

SANTIAGO, Jan. 14 (Xinhua) -- Chile registered 8,270 new cases of COVID-19 in 24 hours, seeing one of the highest peaks during the pandemic and bringing the total caseload to 1,857,764, the Ministry of Health said Friday.

In the same period, 24 more people died from the disease, raising the death toll to 39,355, the ministry added in its daily report.

The COVID-19 positivity rate for the day was 8.59 percent nationwide and 8.78 percent in the Santiago Metropolitan Region.

The South American country averaged 2,500 daily COVID-19 infections in December, but the emergence of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus this month has pushed the average to 5,000 cases per day.

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