National lockdown starts in Colombia amid protests

By Laura Gamba

BOGOTA, Colombia (AA) – Colombia declared a 19-day nationwide lockdown that started at midnight Tuesday to stop the spread of coronavirus.

“We are a few hours away from starting the national quarantine, a very important moment for our country, where our behavior, our attitude, our discipline, our solidarity, our commitment can save lives,” said President Ivan Duque on national television.

Tuesday’s announcement expanded the partial lockdown to the entire nation.

Previous quarantine hours were marked by riots and some stores were looted for food amid the coronavirus panic. Local politicians reported that groups of Venezuelan migrants received false Whatsapp chain messages telling them they would receive help from the government to survive the quarantine.

“Fooled by false chains of Whatsapp messages, dozens of Venezuelans came to Alpujarra to claim 60,000 pesos [about USD 15] that the mayor's office was supposed to give them,” the mayor of Medellin Daniel Quintero wrote on his Twitter account on Tuesday. “It is hard for me to believe some people would want to play with other people's hopes right now.”

In Bogota, protests, queues at bus stations, supermarkets and banks and bus terminals full of individuals wanting to go back home was the balance left by the last day of the preventive isolation drill, which ties up on Wednesday with the beginning of the 19-day national quarantine.

The government asked the public to desist from panic buying as people began crowding markets to stock up before the deadline.

Colombia has reported 378 confirmed coronavirus cases and three deaths.

The National Institute of Food and Drug Monitoring (INVIMA) announced earlier this week that Colombia received 26,000 test kits from Turkey to run coronavirus tests quicker and more efficiently.