Lima, Jan 26 (EFE) .- Ten regions of Peru, including Lima, will enter quarantine as of next Sunday 31 due to the fact that they are at an extreme level of COVID-19 infections, as announced by the Peruvian president on Tuesday , Francisco Sagasti, in a televised message.
Sagasti explained that the regions that will enter confinement until February 14 are
Metropolitan Lima and Lima provinces, Callao, Ancash, Pasco, Huánuco, Junín, Huancavelica, Ica and Apurímac
.
In several of these regions
there are no longer beds in the Intensive Care Units
(ICU) for severe cases with COVID-19 and hospitalizations have multiplied in recent weeks.
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Police wearing masks monitor order on Monday, January 25, 2021, outside an establishment in Callao, Peru, where medical oxygen tanks needed to care for patients with COVID-19 are being recharged amid the pandemic.
(AP Photo / Martin Mejia) AP
In these ten regions, all activities that involve travel will be limited with the exception of grocery stores, which will have a capacity of 40% and interprovincial air and land transportation will also be suspended.
No region escapes restrictions
Another nine regions of the country, Tumbes, Amazonas, Cajamarca, Ayacucho, Cusco, Puno, Arequipa, Moquegua and Tacna, are at a very high level of contagion and will only have access to stores with a capacity of 20%, outdoor restaurants with a capacity of 30% and interprovincial land transport with a capacity of 50%.
Air transport will continue in normal form and
the curfew will be from 20:00 pm until 04:00 am the next day
, in addition, the use of private cars is restricted on weekends.
In the remaining six regions of the country the level of risk is high and the curfew will begin at 9:00 pm, but interprovincial transportation is allowed.
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"We do not have regions in a moderate situation, which indicates the severity of the pandemic that we are facing
," Sagasti said from one of the rooms in the Government Palace.
The head of state added that restrictions for international flights from Europe will be maintained and Brazil will be included.
More ICU beds and oxygen
So far, Peru has 1,102,795 cases, with 11,231 hospitalized and 39,887 deaths, 110 of which died in the last 24 hours.
Regarding the care of the cases, Sagasti specified that in recent weeks 196 beds have been incorporated in the ICU and that in the next two weeks 350 more will be added, to the nearly 1,800 ICU beds that currently exist in the country.
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With the support of the private sector, 2,000 high-flow respirators are being supplied and oxygen generating plants produced in Peru have been donated.
Vaccinations in February
Sagasti affirmed that he has worked "day and night so that this first batch (of one million vaccines) arrives on the announced date and we trust that this shipment, which is ready to be transferred, will arrive in Lima in the next few days."
In addition, he added that he has sent two
supply
contracts of
half a million and one and a half million doses
to the
Chinese laboratory Sinopharm
to arrive in February and March of this year.
In this sense, the president said that "we will begin the vaccination process in February" and that the presidency of the Council of Ministers leads a working group that coordinates the actions to support this immunization process.
He stressed that the vaccination process will begin with the health personnel who work on the front line of care.
"I am a man of science, I believe in the advances of humanity, and he will be one of the first to vaccinate me,"
Sagasti said.
Oxygen shortage affects COVID-19 patients in Brazil
Jan. 17, 202102: 09
The words of the ruler are especially sensitive today when it became known that
one of the volunteers in the Sinopharm vaccine trials in Peru died of COVID-19
, although the Cayetano Heredia University that led the study clarified that the person had received the placebo.
Sagasti addressed the population to ask them to continue using preventive measures and assured that "Peruvians have shown that we do not give up in the face of adversity."
"We will come out of this crisis, we know that it is possible to do so," he said in the televised message after concluding an extraordinary Council of Ministers to assess the health crisis situation due to the pandemic.
EFE