Record 25,092 Covid cases in Colombia as Bogotá prepares for reopening

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Colombia registered for the second consecutive day a new record number of daily cases of covid-19, with the report of 25,092. At the same time, the mayor of Bogotá, Claudia Lopez, confirmed today that she is preparing the full reopening of the capital for June 8.

After reporting a historic 23,487 cases on Wednesday, today’s infection figure is the highest of the entire pandemic and brings the number of cases to 3,319,193.

Health authorities also reported 513 new deaths on Thursday, the fourth-highest number of the entire pandemic, adding to the total of 86,693 deaths.

The third peak, which began at Easter and is being the one with the highest hospital load and the highest lethality, is “very much determined by the introduction of new strains of greater transmissibility”, said the Minister of Health, Fernando Ruiz, on Thursday.

“The initial affectation of this third peak was surely related to Easter (…), but this second-growth we believe is very much related to the agglomerations and street activities in various parts of the country,” said the minister, alluding to the four weeks of protests taking place in Colombia.

REOPENING OF THE CAPITAL

Despite this panorama, the mayor of Bogotá presented to merchants and business people her proposal to reopen the capital on June 8, withdrawing the night curfew in force between 11 p.m. and 4 a.m. and the dry law.

“It sounds absolutely contradictory, from the epidemiological point of view, to have a 97% ICU occupancy and announce a reopening”, confessed Lopez, who assured that “from the point of view of the social, economic and political context, with a deep institutional distrust, unacceptable poverty and unemployment that is affecting especially women and young people, it is necessary to do so”.

The mayor is confident that by June 8, the social mobilizations that have been taking place since April 28 will have calmed down, and the government will approve her measures.

“I am taking this decision because the citizenship changed its priorities, but life is more important than any material thing”, alleged Lopez, who also informed that she will allow the opening of night leisure with capacity restrictions and until 1 am, as well as remove the restriction of schedules to educational establishments.

This announcement comes when Bogotá continues to be the epicenter of the pandemic and today reported 9,695 cases and 83 deaths due to covid-19 and accumulated the highest number of infections in the whole country, 933,953.

CASES IN THE REST OF THE COUNTRY

After Bogotá, the departments with the most confirmed cases today, according to the latest bulletin of the Ministry of Health, were Antioquia, with 3,537, followed by Valle del Cauca (1,679), Cundinamarca (1,660), Santander (1,334), and Bolivar (905).

Of the 513 deaths registered today (465 belong to previous days), in addition to the 83 that have occurred in Bogota, 70 were in Antioquia, 60 in Valle del Cauca, 42 in Santander, 33 in Cundinamarca, 30 in Atlántico, and 26 in Bolivar.

There are currently 120,276 active cases in the country (3.62% of the total), and 3,101,390 people have recovered from the disease (93.4%).

In addition, 104,269 detection tests were carried out today (56,066 PCR and 48,203 antigens), representing a 24% test positivity rate.

RECORD ALSO FOR VACCINES

On the other side of the coin, Wednesday was the day on which most vaccines were administered in the entire immunization campaign, with 229,124 doses, of which 22,242 were second doses.

Thus, the country reached 8,842,360 doses applied, of which 3,195,848 are the full schedule.

Following the arrival of several shipments of vaccines from Pfizer and Sinovac in recent days, Colombia has received more than 14 million vaccines. Still, it has more than five million available for application in the coming weeks.