Panic over the spread of COVID-19 on Sunday sparked a prison riot in Colombia that killed 23 inmates, as Chile became the latest Latin American country to announce restrictions on movement.
Rioting swept through the crowded jail overnight in Bogota amid rising tensions over the virus in the penitentiary system.
Colombian Minister of Justice Margarita Cabello described the violence as an attempted mass breakout, part of what she said was a coordinated plan with inmates who caused disturbances in 13 jails across the nation.
Photo: Bloomberg
She rejected accusations by rights groups that the riots were sparked by unsanitary conditions inside a prison system that was unprepared to face the pandemic.
In Chile, the minister of health on Sunday announced that a curfew “will take effect throughout the national territory from 10pm to 5am the next day.”
The country, which has 632 infections, registered its first death from the pandemic over the weekend.
Ecuador, which has seen the region’s second-greatest number of deaths after Brazil, on Sunday marked its highest daily increase, doubling to 14 dead and 789 positive cases.
Quito on Sunday ordered the military to take control of the worst-hit province of Guayas in the nation’s southwest.
Ecuadoran Minister of Government Maria Paula Romo said the armed forces had been authorized “to manage the province of Guayas as a national security zone.”
Governments in the region have been stepping up efforts to try to slow the spread of the pandemic.
Argentina, Bolivia, El Salvador and Paraguay are among a growing number of countries to impose a total lockdown of their populations. Colombia is to join the group from midnight tonight with a 19-day mandatory lockdown.
The Bolivian government criticized people for ignoring its lockdown. with Bolivian Minister of Defense Luis Fernando Lopez warning: “We are not going to do this with a 98 percent lockdown. We are only going to defeat the coronavirus with 100 percent commitment.”
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