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The Minister of Health, Fernando Ruiz, reiterated this Thursday that there is an “impossibility” to comply with the guardianship ruling that orders to request PCR tests from international travelers entering the country and, in that sense, affirmed that “What will proceed now will be the filing of the challenge of the ruling and the process will continue.”
Ruiz indicated that comply with the ruling “it is not viable because it has economic and health effects, mainly “.
(Also read: Court reaffirms decision to require proof of covid-19 from travelers)
He also referred to the contempt incident that he could face for not complying with the appeal. “Contempt is a manifest attitude of ill will, negligence, of seeking to obstruct or conscientiously deceive justice and this is not our situation. Ours is the impossibility from the point of view of health and defense of public health in this country to be able to apply a ruling that generates an extreme situation in the face of public health policy, “he said.
Ruiz argued that Colombia has been in strong conditions for ten months to contain the pandemic. “A measure to quarantine 120,000 people who travel each month, implies effects on mental health and public tranquilityto. We Colombians have a level of exhaustion in this regard, ”he said.
(Also read: Could the Ministry of Health be arrested for failure on PCR tests?)
“We have been respectful of orders and abided by hundreds of guardianships, respecting the institutional order,” he indicated and pointed out that this case is a complex situation: “Particularly in the third order limits the capacity as a public health authority to deal with the health emergency linking the issue between the imposition of tests and the culmination of the emergency, which means that we cannot develop the gradualness that we have been giving ”.
“The critical debate is to what extent individual rights in a field of
a pandemic could have limitations, how the right to health competes
with that of work and mobilization. That falls within the realm of public health,
which includes collective interventions, policies aimed at the entire
population, “he added.
(Also: Government maintains that travelers should not present PCR test)
Beyond the ruling, he said, the complicating issue is the limitation of the
capacity of the health authority to maintain a comprehensive strategy in a
complicated subject such as a pandemic.
Compared to other countries that request the test, argued the head of
the Health portfolio, “the epidemiological situation is diverse.” “Colombia has had an extension of contagion with a flattened curve, while in Europe, for example, there are peaks and there are countries that have very large differential effects and the borders are porous,” he concluded.
HEALTH UNIT
