Chile's hospital system in crisis due to COVID

Chile is facing the collapse of its healthcare system due to a lack of hospital beds to care for COVID-19 patients, officials said.

"We need you to please take care of yourselves," pleaded Deputy Health Secretary Alberto Dougnac on Thursday.

Dougnac said the country is quickly running out of hospital beds having gone from using "1,200 beds to 4,450 today."

Some 97% of Chile's hospital beds are now filled with severely ill COVID-19 patients even though 52% of its people have been jabbed with anti-COVID vaccines.

As of Wednesday, there were 3,170 people in hospital intensive care units in the country with 1,200 of those exhibiting new variants of the virus.

In the capital, Santiago, home to eight of the country's 19 million Chileans, 99% of its hospital beds are at capacity.

Just last week Chile registered 45,500 new cases of people with COVID-19.

In Chile,1.4 million people have been infected with COVID-19 and 29,000 have died as a result of the virus.