(QCOSTARICA) Health Minister Daniel Salas had a clear message at the press conference on Wednesday: the main risk for Costa Rica is the situation of the covid-19 in Nicaragua.
“Our main health risk at this time is the high level of virus circulation that exists in Nicaragua. That is the main risk that we have, we have to be very diligent,” he said.
The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) confirmed that community transmission of the disease is already occurring in the neighboring country and urged the government of Daniel Ortega to take the measures that were recommended.
“We have to take care of ourselves, we have to take care of all the activity and follow the protocols. It is true that this risk exists, we have been trying to deal with it in the most intense way, they have already seen the entire deployment and the entire health movement.
“Nicaragua has community transmission. We have not reached that status, we must continue to focus on our status (Costa Rica is in phase three, where there are clusters of identified and isolated cases).
“There is still an enormous responsibility in our population, each family, each person, each company and institution that we apply the protocols,” said the minister.
His message is particularly important because the curve of covid-19 infections in the country rose again with the report of 28 new cases over the previous, with which the total number reached 984, counted since March.
In the past week there 102 new cases were reported.
Minister Salas said that of these new patients, 18 were already in preventive isolation by health order.
“What we need to do so that there is no community transmission is physical and face-to-face distancing, manage our social bubbles, and not going out if you have symptoms, ”he said.
“The risk (Nicaragua), as I indicated, is the most important. I do not want it to be misinterpreted and to say that this is the risk that exists and that we can forget about all the measures, because there is still a risk of transmission not linked to Nicaragua.
“We cannot think that the risk within Costa Rica ceased to exist, let us remember that it is a highly transmissible virus and that if we break the protocols, we still have it here,” said the Health Minister.
At stake right now is the moving forward of the reopening plan. Phase one of the re-opening plan ends in a few days, and the government of Carlos Alvarado is currently evaluating to move forward to phase two as planned or requires a course change.
To the numbers
Of the 984 confirmed cases, 804 are Costa RIcas and 180 foreigners of which 461 are women and 523 men.
The number of hospitalized are 12, two of which are in ICU. A total of 639 have recovered and the total deaths remain at 10.
The number of active cases is now 335.
