Colombia dropped below 19,000 active cases of coronavirus Tuesday, and number not reported in the country since the last week of May, 2020, when the country had completed its first month of strict quarantine. The encouraging news of per-day recoveries comes as 1,314 new infections were registered by the Ministry of Health, putting the total number of cases during 17 months of the pandemic at 4,943,622.
Colombia now occupies 11th place of total infections on the Johns Hopkins global tally, surpassed only in South America, by Argentina’s 5.2 million and Brazil’s 21.2 million.
The death toll, which stands at 125,962, will surpass 126,000 this week despite the country averaging less than 20 daily fatalities from the virus in recent weeks. On Tuesday, the Ministry of Health confirmed 38 deaths, 32 attributed to previous days.
Given the downturn in new infections, U.S Centers for Disease Control (CDC), lowered its Covid-19 travel advisory for Colombia to Level 3 (High), from Level 4 (Very High). Colombia now joins Australia, Canada, Italy (and host of other EU nations) as a place where only the fully vaccinated should visit, and U.S citizens advised to avoid all nonessential travel. The Level 3 ranking contrasts with a recent UK decision to maintain Colombia on its red list of nations banned from entry.
In terms of the vaccination roll-out, 38.5 million doses of the Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Sinovac, Janssen and Moderna vaccines have been administered, representing almost 50% of the population inoculated with at least one shot. According to the Ministry’s most recent figures, 16.1 million have completed the vaccination schedule, without including an estimated 120,000 residents who traveled over the summer to the United States to get jabbed.
