Colombia reports highest number of new daily deaths from Covid-19

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Colombia registered this Monday the highest daily death toll of the pandemic, reporting 420 new deaths and reaching a total of 68,748 fatalities as it goes through the third wave of the health emergency.

The country also added today 14,189 contagions and totaled 2,667,136 infections, at a time when intensive care units are nearing their capacity limit in the main regions.

Colombia had not reported such a high number of deaths in one day since August 22, when the Ministry of Health reported 400 cases in its bulletin, which was the highest figure to date.

According to the daily report of the health entity, the highest number of deaths was registered by Antioquia, with 146, followed by Atlántico (103), Bogotá (52), Valle del Cauca (40), and Cundinamarca (11).

These regions also topped the list of places with the most cases: Atlántico, with 2,470, Bogotá (2,165), Antioquia (2,001), Cundinamarca (723) and Valle del Cauca (701).

According to the daily bulletin of the Ministry of Health, the number of active cases, which stands at 101,106, has also increased in recent weeks, while the number of infections registered as recovered is 2,488,246.

The regions that have accumulated the most infections since March last year continue to be Bogota (739,154), Antioquia (436,264), Valle del Cauca (225,468), Atlántico (207,253) and Cundinamarca (118,468).

BOGOTÁ ORDERS NEW MEASURES

To avoid a collapse of the hospital network, Bogotá authorities decreed from tomorrow a daily curfew from eight o’clock at night until four o’clock in the morning and a general quarantine from Thursday, April 22 at midnight until Monday, April 26 at four o’clock in the morning.

“Friday, Saturday, and Sunday Bogotá will again be in general quarantine, but given the pressure on the hospital system because we are already at 84% of general ICU occupancy, we will put curfew from eight o’clock at night” said today the mayor of Bogota Claudia Lopez.

The situation in the country’s main cities is so critical that the authorities have had to tighten mobility restrictions and biosecurity measures and that highly complex patients are sent to other departments to receive medical attention due to the high occupancy of ICU beds.

“Today, we are at the highest level of total ICU capacity that we have had historically during the pandemic,” claimed the mayor of Bogota.

Today, 62,825 samples were processed, of which 47,637 were PCR samples and 15,188 antigen samples, for a total of 13.90 million tests performed.

In two months, 3,769,499 vaccines against the coronavirus have been applied in Colombia, of which 1,155,411 correspond to second doses.