For Lacalle Pou, there are no more measures to be taken …

“More measures” was the curt response of Uruguayan President Luis Lacalle Pou to the possibility of implementing new restrictions on mobility to stop the advance of covid-19 in the country. Lacalle Pou spoke to the press after receiving the second dose of the Chinese Coronavac vaccine at Maciel Hospital in Montevideo. The president continues to bet on the “freedom with responsibility” of every Uruguayan to face the coronavirus despite the “sad reality” the country is facing, with an exponential increase in deaths in recent weeks.

Lacalle Pou underlined that the current situation “is reversed with vaccination, with personal care and, obviously, with the rapid arrival of hospitalization and intensive treatment”. Faced with criticism from different political spaces that demand new measures against the coronavirus, He reiterated that his “biggest concern” was the return to face-to-face classes.

Regarding the demands for new measures which have come in recent weeks from the Broad Front and even from the parties that make up the government coalition, Lacalle Pou recalled that he did not agree to take “more restrictive measures” such as the mandatory quarantine or night curfew. “Obviously, we all know that it depends a lot on the particular behaviors of each of us to reduce mobility. The measures are taken”, said the right-wing president.

Lacalle Pou referred to the criticisms he received from the Wide front during the last plenary session, during which the left-wing group believes government is implementing “cheap policy” to deal with epidemic. “Everyone who takes charge of the things he says, but the situation is too bad to move like roosters fighting for these thingsReplied the Uruguayan president.

Lacalle Pou announced that he would study this week with the education authorities the possible gradual return to face-to-face classes, because “The biggest concern these days is the loss of school days for children and adolescents”. In this sense, he confirmed that his government maintains the objective of starting the return to class on May 3.

The president also said that the country expects the arrival of 1.5 million more vaccines from the Chinese laboratory Sinovac in the first days of May. “We are waiting for this new shipment to continue with the people who are scheduled and who need the first dose,” said Lacalle Pou, while highlighting the progress of the vaccination plan and said that as and vaccines continue to arrive in the country, they will follow the established milestones.

Regarding people who have not yet registered to be vaccinated, Lacalle Pou said that “you have to know who they are”. For the president, if the person does not get the vaccine because they do not want to, they will have to “campaign harder”, but if the reason is that you don’t have an immunization center nearby, “then maybe we have to make an effort.

On this point, several mayors indicated that it was necessary to work more coordination between the different levels of government, which, according to the president, has already been done. The mayors “brought knowledge of the region and the government listened and added vaccinations, it seems to me that here we all know each other and we talk to each other, we can quietly improve things but the ultimate responsibility lies with the national government” , Lacalle said. Pou as reproduced The Daily.

The Uruguayan president finally spoke of the death threat he received through a video on social networks, the author of which was arrested on Sunday: “People sometimes do things with a certain frame of mind that threaten everyone’s peace, so we filed a complaint, I’m sorry.”Said Lacalle Pou. The representative of the National Party separated this fact from the anti-vaccine marches which were deployed in different parts of the country where the police acted, and during these demonstrations, he affirmed that he “obviously” shared the actions of the prosecution and justice in the case of agglomerations “.

Lacalle Pou, 47, received the first dose of the coronavirus vaccine on March 29 at the same health center where the second was administered.. That day, he was received by dozens of people who flocked to the entrance to greet him. Fruit of this situation had contact with a positive for covid-19, for which he had to undergo a PCR test which ultimately gave a negative result.

According to online surveillance developed by the Ministry of Health, 1,130,016 people have already received the first dose of vaccines developed by Sinovac, Pfizer and AstraZeneca and 490,982 have also received the second. In this way, more than 46 percent of the Uruguayan population have received at least one dose of vaccine.

Since March 13, 2020, when the health emergency was declared in Uruguay due to the detection of the first positives, the South American country has accumulated 184,865 cases and 2,326 deaths. Regarding the situation of intensive care in the country, the Uruguayan Society of Intensive Medicine (SUMI) explained in its latest report on Sunday that 735 of the 988 beds available in the country for this condition are occupied, which represents 74.4%. Of these, 56.3% correspond to patients with covid-19.

In addition all the country’s departments are in the red zone according to the index developed by Harvard University, accumulating more than 25 cases per 100,000 population in the last seven days. The worst department is Río Negro with 135.76 infections, followed by Artigas with 115.71, while the country as a whole has an index of 82.25 per 100,000 inhabitants.