Panama will tighten confinement measures due to an increase in Covid-19 patients in three provinces, where night curfews have been established, with more rigor on Saturdays and Sundays, the Ministry of Health (MINSA) announced on Wednesday.
In northern Colon and western Chiriqui and Bocas del Toro all activities will be cancelled during the weekend, so about one million people, or 22% of the country’s population, will be in absolute quarantine, according to the National Statistics and Census Institute (INEC).
Those three territories concentrate 14.5% of all Covid-19 patients, and the increase in the number of contagions has forced authorities to establish isolation, Minister of Health Luis Fernando Sucre told reporters.
A similar confinement is kept on Saturdays and Sundays in the capital and neighboring Panama Oeste province, where 53% of the population live and reports 76% of Covid-19 patients since the outbreak began on March 9.
Sucre also announced the economic opening of the central provinces of Cocle, Herrera and Los Santos, in the eastern strip of the southern Azuero Peninsula, where the number of Covid-19 cases has decreased.
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