Day 3 of no new cases
No new cases of Covid-19 were reported yesterday — the third day in a row. The Ministry of Health said there were still 23 active cases, all in managed isolation facilities.
The number of confirmed cases in New Zealand remains at 1219. On Friday, 3289 tests were processed, bringing the total to 490,232.
Health Minister Chris Hipkins this week warned if the country was ever to return to level 2, Kiwis would be encouraged to wear masks in situations where they couldn’t physically distance.
However at current level 1, they were not necessary because there was no evidence of community transmission in New Zealand.
For months, the strictest measures confronting the Covid-19 pandemic in Latin America seemed to keep infections in check in El Salvador, but a gradual reopening combined with a political stalemate has seen infections increase nearly fourfold.
Other countries have seen similar surges in infections following a loosening of restrictions but the standoff between President Nayib Bukele and the Legislative Assembly appears to be compounding the problem as the country’s hospitals near collapse.
Bukele is demanding emergency powers and says he has been reduced to a “hospital administrator”.
Lawmakers in the oppositioncontrolled congress, meanwhile, argue the president can confront the pandemic without violating constitutional rights.
Both have an eye on legislative elections scheduled for early next year and appear unwilling to cede any advantage.
“Now we see that the measures are politicised, that they’re looking for political calculations, vote yields,” said Dr Ivan Solano Leiva, an infectious disease expert and vicepresident of the Central American and Caribbean Association of Infectology.
He said politics are making the virus more dangerous, and “caught in the middle are the Salvadoran people, who are getting more sick and dying”.
The government has reported more than 19,500 confirmed infections, a number that has increased nearly 400 per cent since a gradual reopening of the economy began on June 16, and more than 500
Caught in the middle are the Salvadoran people, who are getting more sick and dying. Dr Ivan Solano Leiva
deaths. Reported infections have risen at a similar rate in the rest of the Northern Triangle, Honduras and Guatemala over the same period.
It’s a reversal in a country that early in the pandemic seemed to have the situation under control. Bukele implemented the strictest measures in the region, closing the country’s borders and ordering people to stay at home or face lengthy stays in containment centres.
The president, who remains popular, believes the country needs to be locked down again. He has indicated he would roll back even the limited economic reactivation that began in June. Last week, he announced the second phase of that reopening would be delayed until August 20, the third such delay.
El Salvador’s Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled the legislature must give Bukele the emergency powers to take drastic steps, and that without it, he was violating Salvadorans’ constitutional rights. But the legislative body has declined to do so, and lawmakers have been locked in a months-long standoff with Bukele. “Unfortunately, the Legislative Assembly and the Constitutional Chamber [of the Supreme Court] took it upon themselves to take away all of the legal tools from us and leave the presidency as a sort of hospital administrator,” Bukele said recently in a local television interview.
The Supreme Court yesterday declared Bukele’s decree regulating the economic reopening unconstitutional, saying the president cannot suspend fundamental rights. But the court also repeated its call for legislators to enact appropriate laws.
Bukele responded with a tweet that read: “In every country in the world, governments order gradual reopenings to control the pandemic. In El Salvador today, that is also unconstitutional. Does nothing matter to them any more?”