Costa Rica registered the highest number of new cases this Friday with 119 new cases. This situation forced the government to cancel the reopening of commerce that was planned for this weekend.

“This puts us in a high risk of heading to an exponential curve, here we all have been doing our share to protect the health (of the population), to give the opportunity to people that can get seriously ill to have access to health services in the Social Security Service”, commented Minister of Health, Daniel Salas.

“Based on this we will have to postpone the activation of phase 3 that was announced yesterday, as a preventive measure”, stated Salas.

The total number of positive cases in Costa Rica is now of 2,058; out of these, 982 have already recovered, but the number of people hospitalized went up to 29 with 5 of them in intensive care.

For this weekend commerce was expected to reopen with restrictions in their total capacity, churches were going to be allowed to open doors again as well as theaters, movie theaters and museums. All these is now back on hold and restrictions remain the same as in the past couple of weeks for businesses.

The Minister clarified that businesses that have been operating following the guidelines of phase 2 can continue to do so with the respective sanitary measures.

When it comes to vehicle transit restrictions, they remain the same, however, during the weekend once again, people are only allowed to go to supermarkets, pharmacies, hospitals, and work if they have the necessary justification.

Counties under orange alert (those in the northern zone) and now also Alajuelita and Desamparados will have differentiated restrictions.

*News in development*