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News > Colombia

Colombia: Pandemic Could Last Past 2021, Minister says

  • A woman from the Embera people sells craftwork pieces in Bogota, Colombia. July 12, 2020.

    A woman from the Embera people sells craftwork pieces in Bogota, Colombia. July 12, 2020. | Photo: Twitter/ @Ku1989Paul

Published 15 July 2020
Opinion

Since Colombia recorded its first COVID-19 case in March, the government implemented several precautionary measures including a lockdown. However, authorities also allowed multiple exceptions to the rule.

Colombia's health minister Fernando Ruiz Gomez Wednesday warned the pandemic crisis could extend until early 2021 in the South American nation.

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"The models give us that probably until the end of November, beginning of December, we will have a still relatively significant increase. I hope that by January and February we will have passed the worst of the situation", Ruiz precluded.

Since Colombia recorded the first COVID-19 case in March, the government implemented several precautionary measures, including a lockdown. However, authorities also allowed multiple exceptions to the rule.

Leticia city in the Amazon department was one of the first affected by the virus, given the conjunct territories with other harmed Peruvian and Brazilian areas. The virus then moved from rural to urban locations, such as Bogotá, Medellin, and Cali.

About 450 out of 1,103 Colombian municipalities are COVID-19 free, but as the Health Ministry warns, those localities could face outbreaks in December due to national migration.

"As long as we do not have a vaccine against COVID, we are going to have a very high level of uncertainty in all countries, and that also makes us uncertain about the risks we are facing," Ruiz explained.

As of Wednesday, Colombia health authorities reported 159,898 COVID-19 cases, 5,625 deaths, and 68,806 recoveries from the virus.

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