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Opposition grows in Chile to school reopenings amid COVID-19 surge Four days after face-to-face education was resumed in Chile, 30 schools were temporarily closed due to the detection of coronavirus infections of children and staff. Another 21 schools quarantined the infected but kept the facilities open. Nonetheless, the ultra-right Chilean government of President Sebastian Piñera is proceeding with a reckless policy of progressively opening all public and subsidized private schools in the country. The 2021 academic year started on March 1 with mixed modes of teaching and amid opposition from the wider community. Demonstrations rocked the capital at the beginning and the end of this week as high school students and youth were confronted by a massive deployment of Carabineros Special Forces with the now standard operating procedure of brutal repression and arrests. Only a fraction of the primary and secondary public school population attended in-person classes. ....
Major hospital in Chile goes up in flames amid near collapse of public health system The fire that engulfed San Borja Hospital, one of the major hospitals in Santiago this past Saturday, bears the hallmarks of decades of underfunding and under-resourcing of the public health system by right-wing and “left” governments alike. Amid an alarming escalation of COVID-19 cases that has national intensive care units at 92 percent occupancy, such avoidable catastrophes can only speed up the collapse of an already debilitated health system. It is due both to good fortune as well as the decisive action and dedication of health professionals and emergency services that no one was injured. Around 300 firefighters, 40 fire engines and emergency vehicles battled the blaze after the alert was raised at around 7 a.m. In less than two hours, health staff evacuated the majority of patients, some 300 in total, to safe areas of the hospital to determine who could be discharged and to trans ....