Colombian President Iván Duque has canceled a planned trip to Brasilia which was to take place on March 23. The Colombian’s decision is due to the Covid-19 situation in Brazil, with a record number of deaths and several states operating at the limit of their hospital capacity.
In addition, the circulation of a new variant of the virus in the country, more transmissible than the original, worries several foreign governments. A right-wing leader in Colombia, Duque is reportedly holding a bilateral meeting with President Jair Bolsonaro. The meeting began to be discussed in the current government’s first year, but the emergence of the coronavirus pandemic prevented the program from materializing in 2020.
In recent months, the two chancelleries had agreed to make the trip at the end of March. Now we expect to try to postpone the trip for three months.
According to interlocutors, the Colombian delegation accompanying Duque would have to comply with quarantine on his return to Bogotá, an additional factor to cancel the engagement.
A country of 50 million people, Colombia has so far recorded more than 2.2 million cases of coronavirus and 60,676,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Brazil, in turn, has a total of 11.1 million Covid infections to date, with nearly 270,000 deaths. The country has also recorded an 11 consecutive record breaking days in the moving average of deaths from the disease.