Bogota, Medellín, Barranquilla and Santa Marta, in strict quarantine this weekend

The President of the Republic, Iván Duque, has just announced new preventive measures for Bogotá, taking into account the results of the day of total quarantine experienced last weekend in the Colombian capital and which were analyzed this morning by a committee epidemiological. The city will enter 4×3 this week, with four days of activity and 3 of isolation.

“In the particular case of Bogotá, in a work carried out today between the Ministry of Health, the Epidemiological Committee and also the office of the mayor of the city, it was established that This weekend will apply a strict restriction on mobility on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, very similar to what we saw the previous weekend, obviously with the respective exceptions ”, informed the president.

The measure is accompanied by other indications for the capital, explained by the Minister of Health and Social Protection, Fernando Ruiz, who stressed that “it was decided to implement the 3×4 measure; recommend that universities are turning to virtuality 100% of the time during these days; also that call centers are operating at a maximum of 50 percent because these are services that generate a lot of staff and clutter up public transport ”.

For the former, he added, there will be an exception in the case of students and teachers who need to use laboratories. The measure of seconds, for its part, It does not apply to establishments that support the work of other essential services like ambulances or, in general, line 123.

Likewise, Ruiz said that a “recommendation had been issued that the public institutions of the national and local order maintain a virtuality of 70% in the workplace “, which leaves the offices of the mayor of Bogotá, for example, with 30 percent of the staff in person.

In addition, and despite the fact that administrative segregation is supposed to be completely mandatory, the head of the health portfolio assured that “it was recommended open the bike path and park anyway so that at an adequate distance on Sunday we can do hobbies and sports ”.

The measures, which include the peak and the ID until April 19, are taken taking into account that not only is Bogota entering a critical situation – according to the Saludata platform of the District Health Department, the occupancy of intensive care units, ICU, in the city, it is 76.3% until the reduction of April 12-, but also receives covid patients referred from other cities, such as the two who landed on Tuesday from Medellín.

In fact, in his announcement, the president stressed that decisions were not limited to Bogotá. “We will be in Medellín with these measures; we will adopt two-day weekend measures in other cities that no longer have such strong pressure and such an increase in infections, but we will be with this mechanism of surveillance and prevention of an exponential increase in cases, ”he said.

In this sense, we know that Medellín will be isolated during the same three days that have been determined for Bogotá. For its part, Barranquilla and Santa Marta will have to do the same on Saturday and Sunday.

However, neither Duque nor Ruiz specified whether the other measures – call center, public offices, universities and cycle path – apply as given for the capital. It should be remembered that each of these cities already has its own restrictive measures for the coming weeks.

In Medellín, for example, it was decided to decree Curfew this Tuesday April 13 and Wednesday April 14 from 8:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m. the next day, with general and peak quarantine and identification throughout the department from 8:00 p.m. Thursday to 5:00 a.m. the following Monday.

Santa Marta, for its part, has 6:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m. curfew the next day from last April 12 to April 19. After that day, isolations on Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays, which had been in effect since March 27, return.

Finally, the mayor of Barranquilla, Jaime Pumarejo, told Semana magazine this morning: “We have already reached 860 intensive care units and we are also increasing hospital beds; The other half of the battle is self-care. Let’s take all the measures ”. The announcement of the new decisions should arrive in the coming days.

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