Colombia reported 420 deaths from Covid-19 on Monday, April 19, the highest daily toll since the detection of the coronavirus thirteen months ago, the health ministry said.
This toll exceeds the previous record which was 400 deaths recorded on August 22, 2020, according to the official number of deaths confirmed daily.
The total number of cases has increased to 2,667,136, with 68,748 dead to date, according to the ministry.
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Colombia, with a population of 50 million, is the third most affected country in Latin America by the pandemic, in number of cases and deaths, behind Brazil and Mexico.
After detecting the first case of Covid-19 in early March 2020, it is facing a third wave of contagion, which threatens to overwhelm the hospital sector in its main cities.
Restrictions in an attempt to curb the pandemic have been tightened, especially in large cities like Bogotá, where a curfew is again imposed from 8 p.m. to 4 a.m. local time from Tuesday.
The vaccination campaign, launched in mid-February in Colombia, is progressing slowly with only some 3.7 million people having received a first injection.
