Ángel Víctor Torres assured this Friday in Lanzarote that the Canarian Executive will increase the sanctions “as much as possible” for breaching security regulations against covid-19 due to the rise in cases on the islands, a decision would be adopted in the next Governing Council to follow the current upward trend.
After a coordination meeting on security due to the pandemic, Torres also indicated that the hundred military trackers that he will request from the State will serve to reinforce, above all, the areas most affected by the rebound, mainly the islands of Gran Canaria and Lanzarote.
He highlighted that in Gran Canaria more trackers have been incorporated (from 89 to 158) with regional resources and that on these islands the local police will also support the tracking task, mainly to control people who test positive and do not comply with quarantine .
“A person who receives the order to be quarantined for ten days must comply with it. It is an obligation of a sanitary nature, but also of another nature, with the pertinent sanctions ”, warned Torres.
Asked about the reasons that have made Gran Canaria and Lanzarote lead the regional rebound, the president pointed out that, just as the experts have no answer to explain why the initial wave affected Tenerife more, now there is no answer to justify what is happening on these other islands.
He also recalled that the two large islands have many similarities in population, customs and habits, and hoped that there will be some explanation in the future “because that could help a lot” to control the coronavirus, and revealed that this appointment in Arrecife was justified in the “significant” rebound in the pandemic that Lanzarote suffers.
At a press conference, the Canarian president explained that the so-called “hot zones” are those that exceed 100 cases per 100,000 inhabitants in the Accumulated Index (AI) of cases declared seven days later and that this can occur in a district, a neighborhood, a municipality or an island.
“To limit the scope, the Governing Council circumscribed it to each island this Thursday, but it is clear that in Gran Canaria there are a dozen municipalities that exceed that record and it also occurs in two locations in Lanzarote. For those sites, we have made the most restrictive decisions, but the confinement is established from seven days with 600 positives per 100,000 inhabitants ”, he pointed out.
Torres estimated that those numbers do not have to be reached anywhere in the Canary Islands. “There are districts with about 300 cases, but it does not have to take that leap if we take the appropriate measures and surveillance,” said the president.
Of course, he warned that, if these numbers were reached, the appropriate decision to confine would be made, although the key now passes through compliance with the rules.
Torres recalled that the Executive agreed on August 6 to maximize security measures with the confidence that it would not be necessary to increase them, but that this month five Government Councils have already been held, something unprecedented, “because since 8 , and from a normalized situation of 10 or 15 infections a day, it went from 50, 70, … “.
He noted that on the 13th they decided to close nightlife; smoking was banned if the safety distance was not respected, and other more restrictive measures were taken that were later extended to the entire country. “And this Thursday new decisions were made because the data has continued to rise,” he stressed.
“In these 14 days we are playing to have better figures or to adopt more restrictive decisions. These are measures that we do not want to take, but we will be obliged to do so if epidemiological data are not improved, because we do not want hospitals to be saturated, that we return to the nightmare of last March and April, that citizens live in a state of permanent alarm, nor does it put the economy at risk ”, he explained.
After highlighting that the Canary Islands continue to be one of the most favorable communities, he regretted that the data was “much better three weeks ago”, and therefore, asked that “the correct path” be recovered with the involvement of all security agents and political leaders .
In his opinion, “you have to walk hand in hand” to comply with the rules, “which is the important thing.”
According to Torres, compliance with the new measures requires the support of the State security forces, public representatives, but, above all, “from each canary, so that they respect the rules and enforce them when they are breached.”
The president admits that they are “tough measures”, but insists that, in islands such as Lanzarote and Gran Canaria, since there are more than one hundred cases per 100,000 inhabitants, “there will be no act with more than ten people, neither social nor educational neither cultural nor economic ”.
He also remarked that one of the objectives is to ensure that crowds or crowds “do not lead to an increase in infections.”
Torres announced that the scientific committee will meet again at the beginning of next week and thanked how today’s meeting was developed for the support and involvement of “all the mayors” of Lanzarote, as well as the Cabildo and the state security forces , regional and local
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