After receiving world recognition for their handling of Covid-19 with a minimal outbreak, Costa Rica has spent the past few weeks battling to get the spread under control. It didn’t seem that long ago Costa Rica was reporting new cases of just 10-20 per day but numbers started climbing in June and in the past couple weeks Costa Rica has been reporting new case counts in the 250-400 range daily. Most of these cases have been concentrated in the San Jose metropolitan area, with many of them coming from lower-income and poorer areas. Costa Rica is now approaching 10,000 total cases, with hospitalizations quickly starting to become a threat to overwhelm the healthcare system. This has lead the government to progress to phase 3 of restrictions and going back to shutting many things back down. Last weekend the government announced driving restrictions for the entire country and shut down non-essential businesses for those areas categorized in “Orange Alert”, where cases have spiked or are highly concentrated.
Unfortunately, Jaco’s Canton (Garabito) was included in that Orange Alert category, despite only having 4 active cases and just over 30 total cases this entire time. Locals in Jaco are upset and frustrated to say the least, but more so are confused as to why Jaco was put under this status. While the area still would have been impacted by the lack of any sort of local tourism, avoiding the Orange Alert category would have allowed all businesses in the Canton like restaurants, gyms, stores all continue to operate during this time as nonessential businesses are only restricted in those Orange Alert areas.
Equally frustrated are the many travelers looking to make the trip to Costa Rica. While August 1 remains the date for airports to open up to allow foreigners, the Health Minister previously stated that only countries where cases of the virus are under control would initially be allowed. At this point, all of us can only speculate as to when both border and local restrictions will open up.
If you would like to help families in need in the Jaco area please be sure to check out this campaign here.
