The Puente Alto Municipality and CMPC inaugurate a mobile clinic that will traverse the community vaccinating against Covid-19.

There are roughly 1,000 active cases of Covid-19 currently in the Puente Alto district, the most populous one in the Metropolitan Region with the highest rate of people behind schedule for vaccinations. This is why CMPC decided to once more assist the Municipality and the Ministry of Health by making a mobile clinic available to head out and find those who have yet to or get the first or second dose. 

In the area where Pie Andino and Eduardo Cordero streets meet up at the Lomas Oriente office, a mobile clinic was inaugurated this morning in the presence of neighbors and the Southeast Health Services Director Fernando Betanzo and the Puente Alto Municipal Health Department Director Paulina Pinto. Also in attendance were Puente Alto Municipal Health Department Assistant Director Luz María Montalba, the General Secretary Municipal Agency for Education, Health and Youth Services of Puente Alto Daniela Torres and the CMPC Assistant Public Affairs Manager Francisco Torrealba.

During the event Southeast Metropolitan Health Services Director Fernando Betanzo thanked CMPC for the initiative pointing out the benefits of joint work between the public and private spheres. He added that Puente Alto has ground to cover in its vaccination strategy. “This municipality still has a very low compliance rate for the vaccination strategy goal. Only recently has 67% of our target population gotten its first dose. Second doses have been administered to only 54%. The majority of those who still need vaccination are under 60 years of age. Our senior citizens have behaved well with coverage rates above 90%,” he said. 

The General Secretary of the Municipal Agency for Education, Health and Youth Services of Puente Alto Daniela Torres said, “This alliance between CMPC and the Municipal Agency lets us broaden our strategy of bringing the vaccine process to all neighbors using the mobile clinic and health teams to reach strategic locations in the community to those who for various reasons have been unable to access it.

CMPC Assistant Public Affairs Manager Francisco Torrealba said, “We are very pleased that we can collaborate on this mission of heading out to help neighbors get vaccinated so they are protected against Covid-19 as much as possible. This is a pivotal moment for us in combating the pandemic. As a country we’ve made a lot of progress, but we still have the challenge of getting more people up-to-date on both doses. That is why we wanted to provide this clinic to the municipality to assist in traveling through the community looking for people who haven’t yet gotten both for whatever reason.”

The vehicle began operations Tuesday June 22nd. It has an equipped mobile office with GPS geolocation tracking. After two months of operations, the Municipality will assess whether or not to continue to launch the second stage of the initiative, the aim of which is to use the mobile clinic to provide primary care and prevention services to senior citizens in the community five days per week, Monday through Friday. 

Other support

This is the third mobile clinic campaign conducted by CMPC. The Company along with Desafío Levantemos Chile set up two mobile clinics in Puente Alto in order to help prevent coronavirus infections using PCR tests. Over the first half of this year, a mobile clinic set up by the two entities covered more than 20,000 kilometers of rural communities in the Biobío and La Araucanía Regions bringing the coronavirus and influenza vaccines to isolated residents. 

CMPC also recently renewed the agreements it had made with the Health Services of the Biobío Region and the Los Ángeles and Nacimiento Municipalities, extending the vaccination center operations in each community. Both facilities were set up on premises provided by the Company to the Municipality indefinitely in support of the vaccination process.