Update: Antioquia, Medellin Ease Covid Restrictions for May 10-May 17; Medellin-Bogota Highway Now Unblocked

Antioquia Acting Governor Luis Fernando Suárez announced  May 9 that starting Monday, May 10 through Monday, May 17, a 10-pm to 5-am daily curfew and booze-sales ban will replace the stricter Covid-19 curfew/quarantine standards of the past three weeks.

“Pico y cedula” shopping restrictions will switch to odd/even-numbered days tied to cedulas ending in odd or even numbers. Hence people with cedulas ending in odd numbers can start shopping on Tuesday, May 11, while even-number-ending cedulas qualify for shopping on Wednesday, May 12. Restaurants and hotels are exempt from pico-y cedula.

Because of a delay in getting final approval from Colombia’s Interior Minister for the new shopping and travel restrictions, the prior regulation enabling shopping for cedulas ending in 2 and 3 continues for Monday, May 10.

A significant decrease in new Covid cases, a lower positivity rate in Covid-19-infection tests, a decline in existing Covid cases and a decrease in waiting times for intensive care unit (ICU) beds collectively explain the easing of restrictions for the coming week, he added.

“The indicators show fewer cases and less positivity in tests, but it is not the [hoped-for] expected decrease,” Suárez cautioned during a televised press conference today.

“This rate of recovery is not enough to relieve pressure on the health system. We understand the exhaustion of commerce, of people, but we cannot lower our guard,” hence face-mask mandates, social distancing and strict workplace/public-space health-protocol regulations will continue, he said.

Thankfully, Antioquia also just cleared the Medellin-Bogota highway this morning (May 9) of groups of “protestors” supposedly protesting a recent tax-reform proposal. As a result, crucial oxygen supplies for hospitals, medicines for Covid-19 patients, food and fuel supplies can once again reach all of the Medellin metro area.

Fortunately, Antioquia has largely escaped the violence of other parts of Colombia during the last two weeks of public protests — supposedly sparked by a tentative tax-reform proposal, but in reality sparked by unemployed people, certain left-wing labor unions, some left-wing students and just too many people fed-up with 15-months of economic and social suffering along with suffocating mobility restrictions, all caused by the Covid-19 pandemic rather than by the Colombian government.

These mainly peaceful protests also have been infiltrated by violent narco-communist terrorist actors including ELN and re-FARC — along with agents from the narco-communist dictatorship of neighboring Venezuela, which sent agent-provocateurs dressed in fake Colombian police uniforms to cause havoc, as has been publicly documented by official video cameras of captured terrorist agents.

Scores of private buildings, stores, police stations, bus stations, public transit buses, ambulances and police vehicles have been torched by these terrorists — and in addition some terrorists tried to burn alive policemen trapped inside one police station, as has been officially documented.

More than 600 police so far have been injured by violent protestors who have been shooting bullets, rocks, bombs and Molotov cocktails, while more than a dozen other people – allegedly including some “innocent protestors” – have died in obscure circumstances during the protests, according to Colombia’s Attorney General.