Peru Anticipates a Possible Third Wave of COVID-19

Peru's government is preparing for a possible third wave of infections of COVID-19, President Francisco Sagasti said on Wednesday.

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Health officials anticipate the third wave of COVID-19 cases because "there is a third wave throughout the world," Sagasti said in an interview with local radio station Radio Uno Tacna.

"We are in the middle ... between the second and a possible third wave, in the sense that we do not see uniformly across the country a significant increase in test positivity," he said.

In fact, several regions of the country have seen a slight reduction in COVID-19 infections in recent weeks, according to health authorities.

Peru's transmission rate, or basic "reproduction number," in recent weeks fell below 1 to reach 0.7, the director of the National Center for Epidemiology, Prevention and Disease Control, Julio Ruiz, said recently.

In December, the rate reached 1.3, triggering a wave of infections starting in January.

Peru has registered 1,427,064 confirmed cases of COVID-19 since the onset of the pandemic and 49,330 deaths from the disease, according to the latest report from the Ministry of Health.