CARACAS: Venezuela has “succeeded in starting the plateau stage” of its curve of novel coronavirus (COVID-19) infections, Venezuelan Health Minister Carlos Alvarado said Tuesday.
Venezuela’s government confronted the epidemic with a three-phase plan, Alvarado told a meeting of the Directing Council of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), via videoconference from Caracas.
The first phase was to prepare and train for the pandemic.
The second phase sparked a “radical lockdown when the first cases appeared and a health emergency was declared,” he said.
The third phase saw “controlled flexibilization (of the lockdown) characterized by the ‘7 plus 7’ method, which means seven days of radical lockdown and seven days of differentiated relaxation” of restrictions, said Alvarado. The plan “made it possible to strike a balance between gradually reactivating social and economic life and epidemiologically controlling COVID-19 in Venezuela,” he said. Alvarado also thanked the humanitarian aid, solidarity and cooperation of the World Health Organization, PAHO, the United Nations and “the sister governments of China, Russia, Cuba, Iran and other countries.”
Meanwhile, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Tuesday called for an end to unilateral coercive measures, such as economic, financial and trade sanctions imposed by one country against another.
In an address, via videoconference from Caracas, to a high-level United Nations event on financing for development in the era of COVID-19 and beyond, Maduro said that embargoes only “aggravate the conditions of poverty and further violate the right to development.”–Agencies
