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Article 155 of the Sanitary Code. That is one of the legal norms that the Seremi de Salud will invoke to carry out inspections in homes for these National Holidays when there is opposition from the inhabitants to enter houses to control the allowed capacity.
The Metropolitan Health Ministry, Paula Labra, has said that “we can enter, and if the person refuses to let us in, we can make a search resolution.”
Seremi procedures will be carried out when there is a complaint or suspicion of sanitary infractions. Labra specified that officials must wear their credentials, with names, signatures, and their jackets from the agency.
The Minister of the Interior, Víctor Pérez, meanwhile, affirmed that “on pandemic issues, the health authority has no restrictions, because what it is taking care of is the spread of a virus.”
How will the health authority do it? The Sanitary Code establishes that “the sanitary authority may inspect and register any place, building, house, premises and workplaces, whether public or private.” Then, it adds that “in the case of buildings or closed places, the entry and registration must be carried out with a prior decree of search by the Director General of Health, with the help of the public force if necessary.”
The expert lawyer in public law Cristóbal Osorio assures that this is a very common power used by the seremis and that it acquires greater relevance in a health alert. “The importance of the exercise of public function and the search of private premises not only plays a role in a pandemic. Every day in environmental matters it may happen that a company has to be audited, and if there were no help from the public force, the authority could not adopt measures, ”says Osorio.
For his part, the administrative lawyer Luis Cordero adds that this rule must be complemented by an international treaty, the International Health Regulations, which was ratified by Chile in 2008. This treaty establishes that “health powers cannot be used for police or state security purposes.”
Cordero, in turn, adds another element: “The most important thing is the taking of the minutes. The person must be clear about what is being put on the record. Therefore, if you have any observations, you have to ask the official to leave a record ”.
This Tuesday, the INDH announced that it will officiate at the health authority consulting the legality of this measure.
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