SANTIAGO, March 19 (Xinhua) -- Chile registered 12,357 COVID-19 cases and 101 related deaths in the last 24 hours, raising its total caseload to 3,381,681 and national death toll to 44,440, the Ministry of Health reported Saturday.
The ministry said that COVID-19 cases in Chile have fallen 38 percent in the last two weeks, after the country was hit by a wave of infections caused by the Omicron variant.
But experts have expressed concern about the high number of deaths primarily among the unvaccinated.
The ministry also said that the positivity rate of PCR tests reached 12.8 percent nationwide and 10.4 percent in the Santiago Metropolitan Region in the last day.
There are currently 58,084 active cases in Chile, with 795 patients hospitalized in intensive care units and 634 on ventilators, according to the health ministry. ■
