CARACAS (AP) – President Nicolás Maduro announced on Sunday the suspension of the quarantine easing scheme that he had been applying since June, at least for the next two weeks, to stop the chain of COVID-19 infections as they rebound the cases in Venezuela.
The president warned that the increase in infections is linked to the presence in the country of the new variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, known as P1 and P2, the latter arising in Brazil.
Venezuela “is facing a new wave of infections” of COVID-19 due to the presence of variants of the virus in the country since last week, he said. That would be the “fundamental cause” of the rise in infections, “although not The only one”.
Maduro observed that the increase in infections is also related to the relaxation of the biosecurity measures adopted by his government to reduce infections in markets, shopping centers, retail stores, banks and public transport, among others.
Since June 1, the government, with some adjustments, has been applying flexible time bands for the partial reactivation of economic, commercial and financial activities at continuous seven-day intervals in more than 50 sectors, followed by a return to “Radical quarantine” in the next seven days.
Between the relaxation of the biosecurity measures that is observed in the streets and the variant of the virus, “practically this is taking us to the zero point of last year, to the zero point of March 2020”, highlighted the president, lamenting the setback.
In Venezuela – where the coronavirus has not hit as hard as in other South American countries – there are more than 150,300 positive cases and 1,483 deaths
The Maduro government, citing successes in curbing infections, had been steadily relaxing the quarantine adopted on March 16, 2020, three days after confirming the first two cases of coronavirus in Venezuela.
In December, the government authorized the relaxation of confinement measures for more than five consecutive weeks on the occasion of the Christmas holidays, and in February it did the same for the carnival, which resulted in massive mobilizations of people and mass concentrations in the different spaces public.
Now, contrary to his initial plan, Maduro announced that “Easter this year will again be in a radical quarantine.” Only essential services such as food, health and telecommunications, among others, will remain active.
Starting Monday, “we are going to two continuous weeks of radical quarantine … with maximum vigilance from the State, the institutions and we do it for the health of the families,” he added.
Additionally, Maduro ruled out the reopening of educational centers scheduled for April.
“For now it is not possible, for now we are not going to start face-to-face classes,” he said.
The president pointed out that, among the indicators that give evidence that Venezuela is in the middle of a second wave of COVID-19, there would be an increase from 21 positive cases per 100,000 inhabitants to 27 per 100,000 in the last week.
Furthermore, “in the last week we have maintained an average of 739 new cases and 456 recovered per day, after months of staying ‘even’,” he said. At the same time, “the occupation of hospital beds” is growing, he said, without giving other details.
On February 18, vaccination began in Venezuela. Between February 13 and March 6, 200,000 doses of the Russian Sputnik V inoculation arrived, representing 2% of the total of 10 million initially agreed in December between Caracas and Moscow.
Meanwhile, Venezuela received on March 1 a batch of 500,000 doses of the Vero Cell vaccine from the Chinese state company Sinopharm, donated by the Asian giant.
Maduro reported days after that his government invested 200 million dollars in the 10 million doses of the Russian vaccine, which should be in the country in April, when it is expected that Venezuela will be in a position to deploy a massive vaccination campaign.
