Bogotá, July 1, 2022. At the 136th Unified Command Post for COVID-19 care, held in Bogotá, the minister of Health and Social Protection, Fernando Ruiz, referred to different issues such as the end of the health emergency, vaccination, and current situation of the country.
Video of the minister of Health, Fernando Ruiz
"As of today, we have already overcome the health emergency, and we believe that, after the analysis by the Epidemiological Committee and the Ministry of Health, the situation has improved substantially in recent months, especially in terms of mortality, and the measures in the emergency, no longer had an important or critical effect, for the most part," the minister said.
Ruiz was emphatic in saying that "this does not mean that we are not still in a pandemic; we continue to address all the contagion problems, we continue with hospitalization issues and, most importantly, we must maintain the vaccination strategy."
He added that in the last two weeks the number of cases and deaths has been increasing, albeit still below the threshold limits to consider it a risk situation. "We have also seen a reduction in vaccination; we know that maintaining sustained immunity is essential and that is achieved with boosters and completing the initial schedules," he said.
"We all have to make a very big effort and keep it up to continue with the process of controlling and mitigating the pandemic," the minister said.
He also reported that announcements will be made today of some measures from the Ministry of Health, "a circular to continue the regularization of COVID-19 vaccination in the EPI, which implies that there will be more points and we must also guide the population about the new places where vaccinations are administered.
In addition, he noted that it is also very important to take into account that there are measures that we will maintain, "for example, the transitory nature of the qualification, with which we have made gains in telemedicine services and qualified services."
And, finally, regarding the issues addressed in this PMU, he said that "the resolution on strategic reserve is being issued. The vaccine law enabled this consolidation, in order to maintain a stock of vaccines that allows us to visualize, in the future, that in the face of new variants that can lead to significant infections or high mortality, it is necessary to maintain a reserve of vaccines in the country for emergency operations or vaccination to be increased, It would be a very difficult situation if we were to face a risk and not have vaccines available."
The remarks by the head of the health ministry ended by highlighting that, in the Bloomberg index, Colombia ranked 12th among the countries that best managed the pandemic, "first country in Latin America and second in America after Canada. We see that the list includes countries with supremely high income and economic capacity. We truly acknowledge the efforts of all the actors, of Colombians, the control bodies, and military forces."
"This is a message of optimism, the work continues, and we cannot lower our guard, we must continue to work very hard for our public to reduce the risk because it is a reality that COVID-19 is not going to go away. What is needed here is an integrated work of the health sector to keep the risk as low as possible with a highly immunized population, as well as communication and work in terms of risk of the entities in the sector," Ruiz concluded.
