Coronavirus Colombia: avoiding another quarantine, the great challenge in a new phase of isolation – Government – Politics

The negative consequences of the pandemic have been so devastating that they produced headlines like this: ‘Dane: A quarter of households went from three to two meals a day’.

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Indeed, the Social Pulse Survey (EPS), released on Friday, revealed that 23 per cent of households reduced ‘daily hits’ from 3 to 2 and, even more seriously, 10 per cent of households now only have one meal a day

The study also details that the heads of household have been “very emotionally affected” in these uncertain times. In the 23 largest cities, they were asked how they felt during the quarantine. “44 percent of those people who are in charge of the home responded that they have felt worry, nerves and sadness”says the director of Dane, Juan Daniel Oviedo.

“Almost five million jobs were lost due to the pandemic,” says Luis Fernando Mejía, director of Fedesarrollo. “One in five Colombians with the possibility of working was left on the street, a very great destruction for a society where most households depend substantially on labor income,” he explains. For this reason, he believes that without entering into that health or economic dilemma, the country did need the opening that is coming.

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The day D’

On the way to 600,000 infected and 20,000 dead, Colombia faces this challenge as of this Tuesday, September 1. Gone are the mandatory quarantines that kept a good part of the people locked in their homes and we move to ‘responsible individual distancing’.

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It is a vote of confidence with a call to responsibility, which in this case is as basic as it is important: comply with biosafety protocols – mandatory use of face masks, frequent hand washing and avoiding mass encounters.

It is a delicate phase in which collective solidarity is appealed so that the country can rise up, the economy reactivates, employment recovers and, key, the spread of the virus is kept at bay.

President Iván Duque declared the start of the quarantine on March 22. The measure was effective, as the WHO told him that things were being done properly in the fundamental purpose of avoiding the collapse of the health system. Later, the president decreed more extensions, although in parallel he gave the green light to the gradual opening of economic sectors.

(Plus: Health achievements after the 159-day quarantine)

So until reaching the phase of this Tuesday, which will include the reopening of the economy and the return of national air transport and inter-municipal land transport.

But is such a risk worth taking? Martha Ospina, director of the National Institute of Health, puts things in context and asks to take a look back. What was achieved with the quarantine? He asks. “Buy time,” he replies. “Time to train doctors, to better understand the disease, test clinical trials, expand the diagnostic network, search the world for ventilators, buy them and have them start arriving”, lists.

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Due to her condition of having been in the front line of battle against the coronavirus and knowing the painful consequences that it can cause, she, however, says that a quarantine is an extreme measure and that it becomes “unsustainable” because “we all need to work”. Colombia, he says, cannot even be compared to countries that have higher income rates and that could not endure the quarantine for so many days either.

So what? “Well, we have to change, and that is why we are going to individualized isolation, but that must be serious,” she demands. “Colombians of all strata, in the cities, in the municipalities,” must change the chip. Save those concepts as national as harmful of the “clever” that “does not respect the measures and blows them up.” In that case, it can’t be, he cries out. That is why she says that she has “anguish” not only as director of the Institute, but as a Colombian, because she knows that life itself is at stake.

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For Diego Molano, director of the Administrative Department of the Presidency and one of the officials of the team created to face the unexpected covid-19, the opening was made based on technical and scientific health and economic data. Quarantines do not cure, they only allow us to buy time to prepare and that is what we did, he says: we strengthened the health system to guarantee medical care and save lives, he explains.

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“Colombia went from doing 600 tests a day in March to more than 40,000 a day this month. We increased the number of critical care beds from 4,300 to 9,800, from a goal of 10,000; We went from zero to more than 100 laboratories for the processing of PCR tests, we dispersed 78 million protection elements for health personnel who are in the front line, and we activated the strategy of Testing, Tracing and Selective Isolation ”, Molano lists.

Where is the peak?

“Thanks to all this work, we can now focus on reducing the contagion rate, which at the beginning of the pandemic was around 2.7 and is now 1.3, and with the Sustainable Selective Testing, Tracking and Isolation strategy ( PRASS) we hope it reaches one or less ”, he assures. But why now? Has the peak of the pandemic passed?

In the House of Nariño they believe that Thanks to the opportunity with which the prevention, containment and mitigation measures were taken, there was not a national peak, but regional and focused ones that have been controlled, like those of a couple of months ago in Leticia, Tumaco, Quibdó, Barranquilla, Cartagena and Cali and that now other regions face; there is greater capacity to respond.

(Also read: Who can leave and who cannot as of September 1?)

The State considers that we are in what epidemiologists call a plateau, which may still take a few days. But is a regrowth feared? In some parts of the world, such as Spain and Germany, outbreaks have occurred. “That is why selective isolation and responsible individual distancing are now essential”, reiterates President Duque.

In this we must be categorical: it is no and no to relaxation. A new quarantine would have unforeseeable consequences. This is how Idaly Barreto, doctor in social psychology and dean of the Faculty of Psychology at the Catholic University of Colombia, warns: “Colombians who have been disciplined with prevention measures will continue to maintain good habits. However, they will be exposed to environments in which they will not be able to regulate the non-compliance of other people’s biosecurity protocols. The lack of public awareness, added to the socioeconomic and infrastructure conditions, will increase the possibility of outbreaks ”, he says.

It is tradition, finally, that with the arrival of September in the collective imagination it is believed that the year is already gone and that Christmas and New Years are thought of. That was also considered by the Government this week when asked: how will the end of the year parties work? “The pandemic is changeable, so we cannot answer that question with certainty,” the Health Ministry said.

“As long as there is no treatment or vaccine, we must avoid crowded, closed places, and close contact. To achieve a family Christmas we must, today more than ever, be more disciplined and comply with all biosecurity protocols, “he added.

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ARMANDO NEIRA
POLICY EDITOR