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A soldier checks a checkpoint in the Chilean capital Santiago as the country imposes a Covid-19 lockdown -- despite encouraging vaccination rates AFP/MARTIN BERNETTI

Chile is a world leader in its coronavirus vaccination programme and has already given at least one dose to almost a third of its population.

By Thursday the narrow South American nation, hemmed in by the Andes mountains and the Pacific Ocean, had given more than six million people a single dose and 3.1 million both doses, including most over-70s.

And yet that same day, the government put more than 80 per cent of the country's 19 million people in lockdown.

With new virus variants, believed to be more contagious, spreading across the continent, cases have been soaring in Chile despite its vaccination drive.

On Thursday it passed 7,000 new cases in the previous 24 hours: The second highest daily figure recorded.

"They are phenomena that run on totally different tracks," Darwin Acuna, the president of Chile's society of intensive medicine, told AFP about the seeming disconnect between high vaccination and contagion rates.

President Sebastian Pinera has urged the country to make "a last effort" and authorities expect the vaccination push to start bearing fruit next month.

Health Minister Enrique Paris said the lockdown "is tough but necessary", particularly in the Santiago metropolitan area - the most populous in Chile.

The country has recorded more than 950,000 infections and over 22,500 deaths from COVID-19.

Chile began vaccinating health care workers on Dec 24 and from Feb 3 it started with the general population, initially the over 90s.

But a general relaxation of attitudes in the country due to the vaccination campaign and summer holidays, as well as the arrival of new virus variants, pushed a new wave of infection.

"You cannot yet see the effect of the vaccine on the most at-risk people, because for the most at-risk people they have only just had the second dose," said Acuna.

He expects to see "a real effect on the requirement of ICU beds for the most at-risk people" in mid April.

Health care authorities say they have noticed a difference in the identity of those occupying ICU beds since the first wave of the pandemic: patients are younger and sicker.

The government's goal is to immunize 15 million people by Jun 30, achieving coveted "herd immunity," when a sufficiently large proportion of the population is resistant to a pathogen that it has nowhere to spread.

By Thursday, authorities had given almost 6.1 million people a first dose of either the Chinese CoronaVac or Pfizer shots//CNA