The global alert for the coronavirus continues to grow, after this Monday the World Health Organization (WHO) highlighted the risk of a pandemic for this outbreak, which arose in the city of Wuhan, in China.
Given this, Colombia’s Ministerio de Salud (MinSalud) – Ministry of Healthy – extended the measures that have been applied at the national level to strengthen the prevention response and elevated the state of Colombia to “moderate risk”.
A MinSalud Risk Committee has met every week since mid-January to review the progress of the coronavirus. It was the same committee that determined to elevate the risk alert.
This measure is based on the evolution in the last 72 hours of the disease situation in northern Italy and South Korea, places where new cases are appearing whose transmission chains are not yet clear.
It is worth noting that to date, February 26, there have been no confirmed cases of coronavirus in Colombia. The only Colombian reported infected was aboard the Diamond Princess cruise ship in port in Japan.
“We are looking closer to the possibility of seeing imported cases of the coronavirus in our country and that is why we take this action,” said Iván González, Minister of Health.
He explained that immigration processes were expanded for people from China, Korea, the United Arab Emirates, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Italy. This means that a migratory filter will be applied in which travelers should report their situation, places where they have been and possible symptoms, which would allow Colombian authorities to check if an individual should receive medical attention.
Conoce y comparte los signos y síntomas del nuevo coronavirus (COVID-19). Aprende a detectarlo y a saber qué hacer en caso de presentar cualquiera de ellos. pic.twitter.com/xaTFNUvpvb
— MinSaludCol (@MinSaludCol) February 23, 2020
González said that “the only routine that people should change in their homes after the declaration of moderate risk is to wash their hands, be careful. Clean hands reduce the risk of transmission of a virus between one person and another by 50%”.
