The COE, made up of different first response institutions to the Covid-19 pandemic, reports that in the last week, a total of 76 cantons registered increases in the number of cases in their territories, ranging from 1 to 217 cases, San José (766), Alajuela (653) and Heredia (566) being the ones with the most cases.
Costa Rica shows an increase in new cases of Covid-19, associated with the fifth wave of the pandemic and, according to experts, favored by the official decision on the use of the mask.
The week of May 8 to 14, the average number of new cases of Covid-19 reached 1,459, 35 percent higher than the 1,779 reported in the previous similar stage.
A few hours after taking office as president of Costa Rica on the 8th, Rodrigo Chaves signed three executive decrees, two of them related to the Covid-19 pandemic, one on the use of the mask and the other on the mandatory vaccination against that disease, caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus.
According to its content, the decree on anti-Covid-19 immunization requests the National Vaccination and Epidemiology Commission to demonstrate the scientific basis that has supported public health decisions regarding its mandatory nature, and asks that it not be fired from its posts. for those who do not wish to inject themselves against Covid-19.
Meanwhile, the one related to the mask indicates that its use is only mandatory for the personnel of the first line of attention to the pandemic and all citizens who enter health centers. The rest will have the option to use it or not.
Commenting on this executive decree, the president of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Costa Rica, Mauricio Guardia, pointed out that the country is in a fifth wave of Covid-19, so the ideal thing would have been to wait for the behavior that it will have, before making a decision like that.
The demographer Luis Rosero thinks he is wrong. “I think that possibly within a month they will regret it when they see the cases proliferate by the thousands. This was on the increase, with or without these decrees, but now with these decrees, something that was getting ugly could get worse,” he warned.
jha / ale
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