SANTIAGO, Chile  Chile’s health minister said Thursday that the country’s public health system had failed to notify at least 512 people that they were infected with H.I.V., and that private-sector services did not inform an additional 1,364 that they were carrying the virus, which causes AIDS.

Speaking to lawmakers in Santiago, the health minister, Álvaro Erazo, said that in about half of the cases there was no evidence that anyone tried to reach the patients. “There is no justification for that,” Mr. Erazo told members of Chile’s Congress.

The health minister’s admission came just weeks after his predecessor, María Soledad Barría, was forced to resign after revelations that a hospital in Iquique, in the north, had failed to notify dozens of patients that they were H.I.V.-positive. Two people in the hospital later died from complications of AIDS.

Mr. Erazo was summoned before Congress to give a report on the notification problems.

With Thursday’s revelations, the scandal is deepening.