The office of the mayor of Santiago is warning that it will resort to the use of fire department trucks to disperse people agglomerated outside stores and banks. The city government warned people on Tuesday, 21 April 2020 that people will be wet with the water hoses if they violate dispositions ordering keeping at least a meter of physical distance. Santiago is a hotspot for the spreading of coronavirus.
Colonel Alexis Moscat led an operation that explained the future action to those that were agglomerated outside of banks and supermarkets on 27 de Febrero Avenue, Bartolomé Colón, Calle del Sol, Juan Pablo Duarte, Rafael Vidal streets in Santiago.
As of data for 19 April 2020, the province of Santiago has already registered 38 deaths from Covid-19 and 638 positive cases.
Santiago Mayor Abel Martínez favors stepping up restrictive measures to reduce the spreading of the disease in the city.
In the 21 April 2020 press conference, Public Health Minister Dr. Rafael Sánchez Cárdenas said that collective measures taken in Santiago were paying off. He said that while the disease had aggressively escalated early in the province, the number of new cases are significantly down. “The measures are taking effect he said. The containment of the disease in the province can be seen in the statistics. He said this was apparent when many diagnostic tests were run in the province. Time will tell if this continues or if the decline is just temporary,” he said.
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El Caribe
22 April 2020