EL SALVADOR

The President of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, has announced that he will extend the mandatory nationwide quarantine by fifteen days as a preventive measure to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic. Initially, the quarantine period was to last 30 days from March 21 to April 20. The additional days announced by the president must be endorsed by the Legislative Assembly and the president of the legislative body, Mario Ponce (PCN – opposition), is expected to call an extraordinary session in the next few days to analyze and pass the bill.

Bukele added that they were also planning to reinforce certain measures to boost the emergency response. These include increasing the number of virus detection tests performed to a thousand units per day, expanding hospital capacity and investigating the epidemiological links of patients testing positive in greater detail, transferring their relatives to quarantine centers or hotels arranged by the government. “If we manage to get all these measures through, we should be able to contain 100% of the likely contagions,” said the president.

He added that he was going to order security forces to take tougher measures on people failing to comply with the quarantine measures. “I have instructed them to be tougher out there on the street, and those who are violating quarantine should be taken to a containment center for 30 days.” Finally, Bukele noted that despite the repatriation requests from Salvadorans still stranded abroad, the government will not take any action on this issue at this time. “Our country does not have the capacity to bring everybody back into quarantine,” he explained.