Duque extends quarantine until August 30th due to the outbreak of the pandemic
Colombian President Iván Duque announced on Tuesday the extension until August 30 of the quarantine to fight the coronavirus, which ended on the 1st of that month, due to the overflow of COVID infections- 19, of which more than 10,000 positive cases were recorded today for the first time in a single day.
“Mandatory preventive isolation, as a general criterion, is going to extend until August 30,” said the head of state in the television program “Prevention and Action”, which deals with issues related to the pandemic.
The quarantine began on March 25 in order to lower the speed of expansion of COVID-19, which until today leaves 267,385 infected and 9,074 deceased in Colombia.
However, since April 27 the Government has been authorizing the return of productive life for various economic sectors that make confinement today have 43 exceptions, which include construction works and manufacturing factories, among others.
Duque said that this new quarantine will have new characteristics that will allow the country to continue recovering a productive life but without neglecting health.
In this sense, the Colombian president explained that in the municipalities that are not affected by COVID-19 “we continue to move forward in a gradual process of liberation of sectors of the economy”, but avoiding crowds and ensuring that there are no “entertainment spaces that precipitate that agglomeration. “
Likewise, in the areas of medium affectation, epidemiological controls will continue to be carried out and pilot plans for the reopening of various sectors will be provided with the prior authorization of the Ministries of Health and the Interior once the mayors request it.
“We are not talking about a national peak but rather peaks that are occurring subregionally. That is why we have tried to differentiate the populations that are not affected from those with low and high affectation,” he explained.
The Colombian president also highlighted that in this process of differentiation, “more stringent specific interventions have been made in localities and neighborhoods where contagion conglomerates have been found.”
This is the case of Bogotá, where strict quarantines are carried out by localities, while in Medellín, total confinements are maintained during the weekends.
On the other hand, President Duque stressed that the opening up of certain sectors of the economy and daily life must be done in a way that does not lead to overcrowding.
"We continue with the support of the Ministry of Health and mayors seeing activities that do not involve agglomeration and do not affect physical distance," said the president, who gave the example of the drive-in movie theaters.