QCOSTARICA – Among the closures – lockdowns – starting Monday, May 3 and continuing to Sunday, May 9, in the Greater Metropolitan Area of San Jose (GAM) are restaurants and bars.
On Thursday, the government of Carlos Alvarado announced tougher measures to mitigate the growing wave of COVID-19 cases that the country is experiencing, the majority of which are focused in the Central Valley.
“All businesses that sell food such as restaurants, sodas and also bars will be closed, they will only have home delivery and in-vehicle delivery (ie pick up window). We always oppose closures and even more so at times like these that affect the economy,” said Jorge Figueroa, president of Cacore, who participated in the meeting with the government and private business sector.
Figueroa indicates that he understands the concern for the health and life of Costa Ricans, but they will abide by the new measures.
“It will be up to us, the formal (business) sector, to pay for sinners who are informal and illegal (businesses) and who do not comply with the health regulations of the Ministry of Health,” added Figueroa.
For his part, the Asociación de Bares (Asobares) – Association of Bars – believes that with this measure, many businesses will go bankrupt, unemployment will increase, clandestinity will increase as there are no places to consume alcohol legally.
“We are witnesses to the mismanagement that the authorities have carried out by not executing closures of large supermarket chains, shopping centers and other businesses where the capacity and protocol measures are only for a bottle with gel alcohol,” said José Francisco Quesada of Asobares.
Quesada is referring to the practice in most supermarkets, grocery stores, malls, all that is required is to apply gel to the hands. Some do require the taking of the temperature of customers entering and not much more beyond that.
The coronavirus situation in the country
This past week, from Saturday, April 24, to Friday, April 30, 14,061 new confirmed cases of covid-19, breaking records of daily cases four times, with an average of 2,000 news cases daily. Not long ago, just three weeks ago, the average daily was 400 new cases.
The number of people in hospital has, and continues, to test the limits of the Caja Costarricense Seguro Social (CCSS), with a record number of 911 people in hospital as of Friday, of which 380 are in an intensive care unit (ICU), for severe to critical condition.
In the week (April 24 to 30) there were also 95 deaths associated to Covid-19, an average of 14 daily. The daily deaths at the beginning of the month were in the single digits.
