Costa Rica Trying to Fight Off Surge of New Covid-19 Cases

Well, first the good news. The director of the Health Surveillance of Costa Rica, Dr. Rodrigo Marín, expressed yesterday that the country is not in community transmission and is able to trace recent groups where numbers have increased. Dr. Marin was asked if whether it is possible to we are seeing community transmission in the North zone.

Nothing here is set in stone. We are stratifying the risk areas since in the north there is a very important increase at this time. We are still in phase three and we can keep track of the clusters. We would be analyzing that topic daily. We will analyze with a strict epidemiological study,” he added.

The bad news. The new coronavirus entered its third month in Costa Rica with a bang, with two of the highest single-day increases in confirmed cases: Sunday (55) and Wednesday (52). The other days all above 35: Monday (28), Tuesday (21), Thursday (37), Friday (34), and Saturday (35), for a total of 262 new cases in the first week of the month. Overall Costa Rica is still in good shape, however concern is starting to rise, especially with neighboring countries Panama and Nicaragua having larger outbreaks. Many of the recent cases in Costa Rica are in the Northern part of the country where many migrants from Nicaragua positive with the virus seem to be crossing over. Many of these Northern Cantons of Costa Rica have been put on orange alert, in which they are facing special quarantine and lockdown measures along with strict tracing and monitoring.  While the Jaco area     (Garabito) currently has only 2 reported active cases, a further increase for Costa Rica could impact the areas path to economic recovery.