OPINION | Coronavirus: when to put on the mask seems like a subversive act

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New figures for covid-19 in Nicaragua do not add up 3:45

Editor's Note: Soraya Rodríguez Ramos is a Spanish lawyer and MEP for Ciudadanos in the Renew Europe group. The opinions expressed in this comment belong exclusively to the author. See more opinion piece at CNNe.com/opinion.

(CNN Spanish) - After seeing the President of the United States, Donald Trump, suggesting that injecting disinfectant may be a measure to combat covid-19, the President of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, distributing kisses and hugs to challenge him and the Prime Minister From Hungary, Viktor Orbán, using health emergency measures to gag liberties, we might think that we have seen the worst catalog of populism of the 21st century. However, if this pandemic is showing us anything, it is that reality surpasses any dystopian fiction.

Imagine a country whose government, faced with the advance of the virus in neighboring nations, calls mass marches with the motto: Love in times of the covid-19, in which the banners are raised claiming victory against the virus. Imagine a government that, absent, appears punctually and fleetingly to repeat to the citizens that they will not be reached by the pandemic. Imagine a country in which any attempt at self-protection against the imminent threat turns into treason. Where putting on a mask is a subversive act. Where any specialist or dissident news or opinion is accused of misinformation and becomes a source of social alarm around a non-existent, irrational, unjustified danger.

Unfortunately, it is not a script for a new production on any audiovisual platform.

We are talking about Nicaragua today, a reality that has made the Government of the Central American country the worst manager of covid-19, according to the scientific magazine The Lancet .

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The Sandinista government has remained motionless in the face of the advance of a virus that we already know emancipated from borders. According to the presidential couple and the Ministry of Health, the country remains almost immune to covid-19 and community transmission remains unconfirmed. Public health measures have been late, timid and certainly insufficient, under the pretext of absolute control of the situation and an advanced, robust and pandemic-resistant health system, according to its leaders.

In Nicaragua, the health emergency has not yet been declared, the celebration of recreational and sporting events continues, and the government authorities celebrate and dance their saints in religious festivities that hit the ground with closed parishes and acts suspended by the ecclesiastical authorities. Going out and drinking in bars is today an act of faith in the regime. The legitimate fear of contagion is to promote destabilization, chaos, hatred. It is "destroying Nicaragua", in the words of President Daniel Ortega. The specialists who report and alert are "deformed brains," according to Vice President Rosario Murillo.

The administration of the Sandinista government deepens the danger to the life of the population day by day. It is hard to imagine that health personnel do not have basic protection equipment, not due to shortages, but because the non-recognition of the pandemic turns all protection into unnecessary alarm. This situation confronts health professionals with a perverse dilemma: caring for their patients knowing that they themselves can be vectors of contagion. They are exhausted and trapped in a mean and petty policy, such as the one that has caused the unjustified dismissal of six professionals from the Center for Health Research and Studies affiliated with the National Autonomous University of Nicaragua (UNAN), for criticizing government measures, a decision classified as arbitrary and dangerous by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR). This same university transfers its students and resident doctors from other specialties to cover respiratory pathologies without prior notice and despite the fact that a health emergency has not been formalized.

• MIRA: There are more than 1,000 suspected cases of coronavirus in Nicaragua, calculates Citizen Observatory

In its May 12 release, the Ministry of Health (MINSA) noted the existence of 25 cases of covid-19 and eight deaths since the start of the pandemic. The population waits for days for access to data that is not transparent or reliable, as the Pan American Health Organization has repeatedly warned - and collected in the media -. Hardly tests are carried out and deaths from covid-19 are probably attributed to other pathologies. This is deduced from the increasing number of practically clandestine burials that the Government urges families to carry out within three hours. In a leaked report to the press, and prepared by specialists from MINSA itself, an estimated 32,500 cases of covid-19 and 813 deaths in the next 6 months. With these data on the table, the null response from their authorities is inexplicable. How many lives will this continuous denial cost, determined to ignore all scientific criteria?

The right to health is also a human right, and this is the last frontier that the repression of the Ortega and Murillo regime has reached so far. For this reason, as Head of Human Rights of Renew Europe in the Euro-Parliament, I have sent a letter to the high representative and Vice-President of the European Commission, Josep Borrell, urging the EU to use the appropriate foreign policy instruments to promote health, a human right now seriously compromised in Nicaragua. We will continue to support and accompany the Nicaraguan people from the European Parliament in their commitment to democracy and in their search for reparation, justice and truth.

Daniel Ortega masks Nicaragua