Lasers battle against COVID-19

Abstract

On March 8, 2020, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a world pandemic. Ten days later the Chilean government announces the country is under a constitutional state of catastrophe, with measures, among which national entry borders became closed to non-Chilean residents.The first cases of the new corona virus that had already appeared in the country from the beginning of March, scattered throughout our long narrow territory, brought in mostly by people returning from abroad after their summer holidays. Weeks later, the cases multiplied exponentially, and the number of deaths started to rise. By then, it was known what had happened in Wuhan, China and what was going on in critical epicenters like Spain, Italy and France at that time. So, nothing less was expected to happen in Chile. The reasonable question at that time was if the national healthcare system could cope with the number of critical patients that would require intensive care treatment in the upcoming months, particularly in faraway regions in the country. For a population of 18 million, a total of about 800 mechanical ventilators was available, far from being a convincing solution for what was about to be the imminent dark scenario at hospitals and clinics in the upcoming months. Moreover, if this was a world pandemic, would it be feasible to duplicate the number of ventilators in such a short time period; that was indeed the main dilemma.