Uruguay has five consecutive days with more than a thousand cases of coronavirus and the government of Luis Lacalle Pou is studying new measures

Limitation of the right of assembly, reduction of hours in public establishments and suspension of classes are some of the measures that the government of Luis Lacalle Pou will analyze this Tuesday in the Council of Ministers to try to reduce the number of COVID-19 cases in Uruguay.

The South American country is experiencing a resurgence of the first wave, with five consecutive days above 1000 infections per day (including a record of 1587 Sunday 14) and a gradual increase in active cases and intensive care, for which the president summoned his cabinet for this Tuesday, coinciding with the arrival of the second flight from China with the Sinovac vaccines.

According to the presidency, Lacalle Pou summoned his ministers to the executive tower at 4:00 p.m. (19:00 GMT), just after landing at Carrasco International Airport, on the outskirts of Montevideo, the Beijing plane with over 1.5 million doses of CoronaVac, which will complete the 1,750,000 purchased from the Chinese laboratory.

Con 212,900 personas (a 6.07% of the uruguaya population) ya inoculadas con CoronaVac o Pfizer, las dos vacunas que han llegado hasta el momento al país sudamericano, el Ejecutivo de Lacalle Pou sigue confiando en la libertad responsible frente a los confinamientos replicados In the whole world.

Despite the good numbers recorded by Uruguay in the first nine months of the pandemic, the first wave arrived in December – which plateaued in January and February, the holiday period for the austral summer – and around this time . regrowth is recordedAccording to experts, with 10,536 active cases (11.52 positivity in the tests carried out) and 131 in intensive care.

For him, The reduction of hours in bars and restaurants is again on the executive’s table -explored at 2:00 a.m. (05:00 GMT) in January, except in the departments (provinces) which have chosen to keep midnight-, the suspension of classes and the extension of the limitation to the right of assembly, in force now and which must be debated again in Parliament for its renewal.

In addition, on the near horizon is Holy Week, during which Uruguayans tend to leave their habitual residence and move mainly to the beaches in the east of the country, which generates biggest concern in the authorities.

Since March 13, 2020, when the health emergency was declared in Uruguay due to the detection of the first four positives, 72,862 people had the disease and 717 have died.

The situation at the border with Brazil

The occupation of intensive care units in the department (province) of Rivera, located in the north of the country and on the border with Brazil, is “reach levels that can be defined as saturation“Then you should start working on a plan”regional complementation“.

This was indicated on Monday by Julio Pontet, president of the Uruguayan Society of Intensive Medicine (SUMI), who explained that there were 23 beds there between the public and private centers.

For this reason, he stressed the importance of “regional oil complementarity plans“So that some patients can be referred by ambulance to other services located further south.

In this sense, the president of the National Administration of Health Services (ASSE), Leonardo Cipriani, indicated during a press conference in Montevideo that the hospital of Tacuarembó (center-north) has been strengthened ”.with a new CTI (Intensive Treatment Center)He therefore has 12 intensive care beds.

“We have set up a specialized transport with the capacity to transport patients with COVID-19. We have added two new ambulances, with ventilator, monitor, COVID capsules … They will move quickly if the situation does not change“, Explained the head of ASSE.

He also mentioned the Paysandú hospital (north-west), which can help the departments of Salto and Artigas, both in red on the Harvard scale.

On the other hand, Pontet underlined that Uruguay is going through “the worst moment»Of the pandemic and stressed that the SUMI has developed in collaboration with the Ministry of Public Health an emergency plan which covers the possibilities of a saturation plan.

(With information from EFE)

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