RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The former president of Uruguay Julio María Sanguinetti (1985-1990 and 1995-2000), on Friday June 4, asked President Luis Lacalle Pou, of whose party coalition he is a member, to make some adjustments in the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic given the evolution of the situation.
“Lacalle Pou reiterated his criterion of ‘responsible freedom’. We have accepted and supported it, but when circumstances change, the ‘knobs’, which he implemented as a mechanism of adjustment to the changing realities, must also move”, writes the former president in his weekly column in the electronic media Correo de los Viernes.
However, the leader of the Colorado Party (PC, center-right), one of the five that make up the government coalition, does not call for a “confinement” because he says it would damage “even more those who live from their daily work, it would cost a fortune in terms of production and a great result cannot be assured either, as has happened in Argentina and even in European countries.”
“What does seem necessary is to affirm the prevention and social distancing measures that were successful in the first stage,” Sanguinetti points out, alluding to the first nine months of the pandemic, in which Uruguay controlled the Covid-19 figures and became a world reference.
At that time, as throughout the crisis, Lacalle Pou’s government never decreed coercive measures, confinements or quarantines, but urged the population to stay at home and to follow the recommendations of the Ministry of Public Health (MSP).
The former president now claims that Uruguay “does not fully calculate its risks” and that “the dramatic appeal to social discipline” is missing when denouncing the rude attitude of the population.
“It is not a question of taking the police out into the streets to repress right and left, but it is a question of the labor and health control services stepping up their action and with pedagogically exemplary measures to keep the population’s conscience alert,” he points out.
On March 13, 2020, a health emergency was declared in Uruguay due to the detection of the first four positive cases of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus.
Since then, and according to the latest report from the National Emergency System (Sinae), the country has accumulated 304,411 positives, of which 36,218 are people currently suffering from the disease, 533 in intensive treatment centers (CTI) – 579 according to the Uruguayan Society of Intensive Care Medicine (SUMI) – and 4,460 deaths.
Despite the high numbers, duty-free stores on the land border with Brazil (free shops) and gyms and sports clubs have recently reopened.
On the other hand, the suspension of public events and shows has been extended to June 13 -although a kind of “health passport”- as has the restriction of opening hours in bars and restaurants until midnight. In addition, the borders remain closed to tourism.