News
Wednesday 24th February 2021.
February 24, 2021
With a total of 718 new cases of covid-19 , Panama raised its number of infections to 337,805, according to the epidemiological report of the Ministry of Health .In addition, 15 new deaths were reported, and 1 death from previous dates was updated, totaling 5,772 deaths due to this virus in the country. The fatality rate remains at 1.7%. 9,276 new tests were carried out to detect coronavirus, for a percentage of positivity of 7.7%. 1,296 patients are hospitalized, of them 1,115 in ward and 181 in intensive care. The reproductive index of COVID-19 or Rt in Panama has shown in week number 7 of the epidemiological report a slight decrease to 0.82; since last week it was at 0.83.
As of next March 6, the cinemas, casinos and sports fields for recreational use will reopen, announced the Ministry of Health . The reopening of these recreation sites was scheduled for March 15. The change arose from the significant decrease in cases in the country.
The third batch of vaccines from the pharmaceutical company Pfizer, which this time will be 77,200 doses, was due to arrive in Panama at dawn today. This was reported by the Vice Minister of Health, Eyra Ruiz , who said, this Tuesday on Telemetro Reporta , that the final confirmation was expected “within a few hours.”
At least 21 positive cases of Covid-19 were diagnosed in the offices of the administrative coordination of the Social Security Fund of the province of Herrera. Luis Rodríguez, administrative coordinator, reported that the alert was given this Monday, when some officials presented symptoms related to this disease. When performing swab tests, two were positive
The Minister of Labor, Doris Zapata, reported that 121,412 labor contracts that were suspended due to the crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic have been reactivated.
Citizen outrage at the alleged abuses in minors’ shelters grows day by day: Monday morning a criminal complaint was filed with the Public Ministry (MP) and in the afternoon another day of protests took place.
The last test to calibrate the degree of compliance of the Panamanian tax system with the international standard on transparency was published in November 2019. That evaluation, which put under the magnifying glass the tax information exchanges that the country carried out between 2015 and 2018, brought a very negative result: the OECD Global Forum on Transparency described Panama as “not very compliant.”
On Tuesday morning, staff from the Don Bosco Community Board extracted the debris that has trapped the rubbish barrier (ReBoB) – made up of 75 tires and more than 800 plastic bottles – the barrier has been installed since last December, in the river Tapia.
Some 3,665 drug packages were seized by the Colón and Guna Yala Drug Prosecutor’s Office and the National Police (PN), in a port area on the Atlantic coast. According to the authorities, one of the largest seizures in the last ten years within a port.