Costa Rican airports have a coordination and contingency plan in case someone from China (especially Wuhan) arrives in the country with respiratory symptoms. There are also posters with key information and recommendations for tourists entering or leaving the country.
All this is part of the preventive protocol for the new coronavirus 2019-nCoV that is being applied to both Juan Santamaría international airport in San Jose (SJO) and Daniel Oduber (LIR), in Liberia, Guanacaste.
Monday morning, at a press conference, the Minister of Health, Daniel Salas, was emphatic that the entrance to people who were in China will not be closed. There are no direct flights from China to Costa Rica.
“That (closed access) was done by other countries. The World Health Organization (WHO) emphasizes that it is not necessary. We did not with SARS, we did not with MERS, we did not with AH1N1, which were more deadly, nor will we do it with this one,” said Salas.
“The whole focus of sustained infection is in China, especially in Wuhan. It is present in 20 other countries, but in a very isolated way, it is not a sustained transmission. Mortality is 2%, but I believe that when there is a better count of cases that mortality will result in less than 1%,” he added.
