Colombia’s health authorities have confirmed more than 50,000 total coronavirus infections and 1,500 Covid-19 deaths in total and 75 deaths on Sunday alone, the deadliest day of the pandemic so far.
According to the National Health Institute, the total number of infections reached 50,939. More than 21,000 of these people have since been confirmed healthy.
Despite an increase in testing on patients who previously tested positive, the INS has been unable to stop the gradually growing number of infections, which forced the capital Bogota to declare an orange alert.
Healthcare in the southwest of the country has collapsed and also on the Pacific and Caribbean coasts, where the healthcare systems are barely holding on.
The increased pressure of coronavirus is also raising tensions between the country’s healthcare workers and President Ivan Duque who, against all advise, has been trying to reactivate the economy before containing the coronavirus’ spread.
Local and regional authorities’ orders that restrict movement have prevented an uncontrollable spread.
The mayors and governors’ stay at home orders are increasingly difficult to enforce, especially in areas where poverty and the tropical heat impedes people from staying at home.
In Colombia’s Andean region, where both living and weather conditions are more favorable, this has been less of an issue.
More than three months after the coronavirus was first confirmed in Colombia, still “the health system is not prepared to confront the emergency,” the director of the Colombian Medical Federation (FMC), Sergio Isaza, told newspaper El Tiempo.
The FMC chief blamed the country’s inability to respond to the crisis on “corruption and the malfunctioning of the system.”
Throughout the country, medical personnel continue to work under precarious circumstances, mainly due to the failure to deliver enough and adequate personal protection equipment necessary to responsibly treat infected or possibly infected patients.
The months June and July will see the highest number of coronavirus infections and COVID-19 deaths, according to projections.