Chile's new daily cases of COVID-19 surpassed 35,000 on Thursday for the first time, after tests detected 35,197 infections in 24 hours, raising the nation's caseload to 2,258,005, the Health Ministry said.
In the same 24 hours, 82 more people died from causes related to the virus, the highest daily death toll in six months, which raised the overall pandemic death toll to 39,824.
The daily positivity rate registered 23.06 percent nationwide and 22.86 percent in the metropolitan region of Santiago, home to more than 7 million people, according to the ministry's pandemic update.
Chile saw a 73 percent jump in new infections nationwide over the past seven days and a 219 percent jump in the past 14 days.
It also registered record-high spikes in infections in recent weeks, with over 30,000 new cases in one day and more than 118,000 active cases, driven by the spread of the Omicron variant of the virus.
In the last few days, Chile saw an increase in both the number of patients admitted to intensive care units and the number of deaths from the coronavirus compared to December.