08/29/2020 - 13:16
- Clarín.com
- World
Bolivia will ease the quarantine after five months due to the need to recover the economy, to prevent the coronavirus from going to "coronahunger", announced the interim president of the country, Jeanine Añez.
"People need to go out to work," Añez said on Friday, before the press during a ceremony in La Paz.
The temporary president referred in these terms to the decision that as of September the country goes from the quarantine decreed in March by the Covid-19 pandemic to what she calls a "post-confinement" phase, with fewer restrictions in order to for the economy to recover after five months.
The interim president stressed that "people have the need to work, because if it is not because of the coronavirus, it is because of the coronavirus (...), you despair when you do not have the economic conditions to bring food home, you worry about not having the plate to take home ".
The interim president of Bolivia, Jeanine Añez. makes the quarantine more flexible to reactivate the country's battered economy. Photo: AP
Añez defended the need to "open the economy" , trusting that there will not be an outbreak of the disease in the country, although in other cases they have not been able to avoid it, nor world powers with more resources.
The Bolivian economy experienced a fall of almost 8% from January to June of this year , compared to the same period of the previous year, while until July unemployment grew to 11.8%, when at the end of 2019 it was 4.8 %, according to indicators from the National Institute of Statistics of Bolivia.
The deaths in the country from Covid-19 are 4,791 and 114,409 confirmed cases, although in recent days the report of positives has dropped below 1,000 a day while in previous days it slightly exceeded 2,000, according to official data.
Bolivia fulfilled a rigid quarantine until May 31 with almost the total paralysis of activities and from June it entered the dynamic quarantine that implies several flexibilities until August 31.
New stage
The new phase of "post-confinement" increases the hours from Monday to Friday when you can go out on the street and circulate with vehicles , partially lifts the ban to do so on weekends and allows the reopening of airspace to international flights, since only Some of the humanitarian type operated for the repatriation of Bolivians and residents of the country.
The lifting of restrictions also includes, among other measures, the authorization of transit and commerce in border municipalities, in coordination with neighboring countries.
During September , "the closure of land, river and lake borders" and the "suspension of public events, cultural, sporting, festive, political activities and all kinds of meetings that generate an agglomeration of people will be maintained," says the decree.
The airspace will be closed, except for Bolivians who return to the country and diplomats, who must certify that they do not have covid-19.
Official projections still mention that covid-19 could reach its peak in Bolivia between September and November, in the middle of the general elections scheduled for October 18, after two postponements due to the pandemic and submerged in a climate tensile.
Source: EFE and AFP
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