Bogotá will again be under nighttime curfew from Tuesday, January 19, and in total containment next weekend for the third time in a row, in the face of the rise in covid-19 cases which threatens to overwhelm hospitals in the capital. Colombian.
"We have just spent two weekends in general quarantine and we will also be this one,
" Mayor Claudia Lopez announced Monday evening during a live transmission via Facebook.
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This new confinement, which will affect the capital of eight million inhabitants, involves the closure of all non-essential businesses from 8 p.m. Friday until 4 a.m. Monday.
In some areas of Bogotá, the measure will remain in effect until January 28.
The mayor has also decreed a night curfew from 8 p.m. local throughout the capital, from January 19 to 28.
This measure is also imposed on Cali, Colombia's third largest city, with 2.2 million inhabitants, until January 22.
The occupancy rate of intensive care units in hospitals is 92% in Bogotá and 94% in Cali.
"The vast majority of people currently hospitalized were infected in December,"
said Claudia Lopez.
Since the beginning of January, Colombia has been facing an unprecedented increase in cases of the new coronavirus, leading the mayors of several cities and the governors of departments to re-impose containment measures affecting 60% of the 50 million inhabitants of the country.
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After the detection of the first case of covid-19 on March 6, 2020, strict confinement was decreed at the end of March and extended for more than five months.
But faced with a serious deterioration in the economic situation, the government gradually eased it for certain sectors of activity, then lifted it on September 1.
However, public events remain prohibited and wearing a mask is compulsory.
Colombia is, after Brazil, the second Latin American country with the most cases of covid-19, with nearly two million confirmed, and the third after Mexico in the number of deaths, with more than 49,000 deaths in this day.