In the area Covid-19 has already cost the lives of 28 people out of 1,300 infected. Currently 750 cases are in follow-up, 22 in isolation in shelters, 40 hospitalized in wards of the Nicolás A. Solano hospital and 5 in the intensive care unit.

One of the measures they will adopt, is the closure of establishments which are not complying with the security measures aimed at avoiding infections, or are not only dedicated to selling the products allowed during the pandemic.

Vergara explained that West Panama, the province that occupies the second highest number of Coronavirus cases, has its epicenters in the townships of Arraiján-Cabecera, Arraiján district and the township of Guadalupe in the La Chorrera district, which he attributed to people not staying in isolation.

Rapid response teams are made up of doctors, nurses, mental health personnel, among others, who go to the places where they have been identified as infected to test the contacts with symptoms to provide care, take them to the hospital or shelters, if required, and isolate those who are asymptomatic.

Vergara explained that everyone is provided daily surveillance. He added that these places with high number of Covid-19 cases, are the same where people staged protests for several hours, in other words, they were in close contacts for a long period of time.

He added that last week the cases increased to 264, but he attributed the increase to more testing being done, due to the search for positive patients. Vergara hopes that the week ahead will remain in a similar range, but with a downward trend, due to the measures that they are going to adopt.

He warned that beyond the measures to the businesses that do not comply, they will be reinforcing an increased surveillance on the streets.