Colombia is nowhere near “beating COVID-19,” but ranked in the problem category of countries that need to take action against the coronavirus pandemic, according to a comparative study.
In the comparative study of website endcoronavirus.org, the South American country fell in the “countries that need to take action” category based on the numbers of reported cases.
The government of President Ivan Duque has failed to take website’s recommended actions that would allow the country to “go back to normal.”
In fact, the government’s actions to reactivate the economy are diametrically opposed to the recommendations “to win” and have so far only led to an apparent acceleration of the virus’s spread.
As metric, the website used a 10-day average of countries’ daily registered cases to determine where a country is “beating” the pandemic, “nearly there,” or “need to take action.”
According to the National Health Institute, Colombia registered on average 662.4 new cases per day over the past 10 days compared to 524.8 the week before.
Active coronavirus infections in Colombia
Source: National Health Institute
This registered increase could be due to the government’s attempts to increase testing. According to Cali mayor Jorge Ospina, however, the acceleration of registered cases in his city is because of the government’s rush to reopen before having the virus under control.
The mayor of Colombia’s third largest city and his counterparts have been slowing down the government’s attempts to reactivate economic activity by applying strict standards on health and hygiene on businesses that want to restart activity.
After Duque implied he would end a national lockdown on June 1 on Tuesday, Ospina announced a local lockdown in an attempt to prevent the collapse of his city’s healthcare system.
The government’s failure to effectively bolster the country’s healthcare system has already caused the collapse of healthcare in the southeastern Amazonas province and threatens to do the same in Cali and multiple port cities.
