Authorities warn that Panama is facing a possible third Covid wave

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – A province in western Panama “is entering” a wave of covid-19. The authorities are taking measures to prevent it from expanding and becoming the third wave to hit the Central American country, said Friday the Minister of Health, Luis Francisco Sucre.

The situation in the province of Chiriqui, bordering Costa Rica, a country that is going through a strong pandemic wave, “has been getting complicated” for three weeks, which led to implementing there and in the neighboring provinces of Veraguas and Cocle some mobility restrictions, said the head of the Ministry of Health (Minsa).

“We are at the door of a possible third wave, Chiriquí is already entering (it) … we are taking measures to avoid that this wave that is coming from Chiriquí, Veraguas, now Coclé” can reach the Metropolitan area, where the capital is and is already registering a “slight” increase in the cases of the disease, said the minister in declarations to the local TVN network.

Sucre recalled that the provinces of Panama, where the capital is located, and the adjoining province of Panama Oeste, suffered two pandemic waves – in mid and late 2020 – which forced the authorities to apply strong and prolonged quarantines that caused a 17.9% drop in the national economy last year.

These controls and the cooperation of the population led to a “control zone”, expressed in recent weeks in positivity of new cases of 5 % or less, but “we are already losing it”, as on Thursday this indicator stood at 5.7 % at a national level, Sucre explained.

“It seems that we are fooling ourselves,” lamented Sucre, who attributed the rise in cases in the country to a relaxation of biosecurity measures by the population, which feels a “false sense of security” both by the good figures of the pandemic in recent weeks and by the progress of vaccination.

The minister asked the population of Panama “not to fall into the same error” in which other countries have incurred, “which relaxed and entered immediately into that wave and in a very drastic and serious way”, and to go to the swabbing centers installed throughout the country to rule out or confirm the disease.

The growth of covid cases occurs when the economic authorities speak of an improvement in consumption. The educational authorities are preparing the opening next May 31 of a hundred schools – out of the more than 3,160 that the country has – to give semi-presential classes.

Panama, a country of 4.28 million inhabitants, has accumulated 372,800 confirmed infections and 6,314 deaths in 14 months of the pandemic and has been carrying out since January 20 a national immunization process in which 882,282 doses of vaccine against covid have already been administered.