Health team to revisit beach closures, Sunday lockdown

After a weekend shower of complaints from business groups over inconsistencies in re-opening rules, President Cortizo, said Monday that he has asked the Health team that handles the Covid-19  to analyze the issue of the reopening of the beaches and the Sunday quarantine.

“If tourism is opening up, domestic flights, international flights, logic tells you: let’s analyze Sundays, make decisions so that we can have coherence on the subject of tourism and health,” said the president

Business sectors pointed out that within the reactivation on Monday, October 12 of the hotels several have the beaches as their main attraction.

On the general situation of the new coronavirus, once the reactivation of various economic sectors has occurred, the president reiterated that the cases are increasing and that part of the work to stop the virus is the Government, but that the population also has to contribute.

He said that they do not want to make decisions to return to quarantine restrictions because that would be fatal for the country.

Earlier, the administrator of the Panama Tourism Authority (ATP), Iván Eskildsen, commented that work is being done so that the reopening of the beaches will be  in a controlled way in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic.

“What you have to look for is how to achieve going to the beaches with family bubbles, avoiding crowds, ”said Eskildsen.

This coordination and evaluations are made with the Ministry of which said that for now access to the beaches is still suspended and that the decision to allow access will depend on how the numbers of cases of the new coronavirus are reflected. In the same way, the quarantine is maintained on Sundays.

Tourist activities are in the group of sectors that can operate from today and the ATP head reiterated that international communications have been had to give confidence to the traveler who wants to know that the airport and tourist activities are implementing all biosecurity measures.

 The Ministerof Commerce and Industries, Ramón Martínez, said that different sectors of the economy are being reactivated and that they have to be managed between the economic reactivation and health.