The municipality of Bogota announced on Sunday the entry into force of severe restrictions on movement of the approximately 8 million inhabitants of the Colombian capital, due to an acceleration of the coronavirus epidemic.
The main measure, applied from Monday, limits residents’ access to commercial establishments depending on whether the last digit on the person’s identity card number is odd or even.
“In the past two weeks, the speed of the contagion has increased, because a lot of people let their guard down,” Bogota Mayor Claudia Lopez said in a video posted to her Twitter account.
Another measure also coming into force on Monday, only one person per family will be able to go out shopping, said Lopez.
The new measures will be applied until January 15.
Colombia has recorded in recent days an acceleration in contamination by the Covid-19 virus. Authorities on Saturday identified 13,990 new cases in 24 hours, the highest figure since the epidemic began in Colombia.
In total, around 1.5 million people have tested positive and 40,475 have died, according to official figures.
It is Bogota that concentrates the majority of cases in Colombia, and intensive care units in the capital are currently 74% occupied.
After detecting its first case in March, which came from Italy, Colombia had imposed strict containment. Faced with the economic collapse that followed, the government relaxed its measures as of September 1, adopting a strategy based on self-protection, the use of masks and the ban on mass events.