Venezuela has received so far around 90,000 nationals at Points of Comprehensive Social Assistance (PASI) located on borders, said President Nicolás Maduro.
In an interview with Venezuelan journalist Ernesto Villegas on Sunday, the Venezuelan president explained that additional 40,000 nationals have returned through illegal border crossings, known as trochas, and at least 10% of them have returned infected with COVID-19.
“At leas 4,000 nationals returned infected, and they infected their relatives and communities. It is a phenomenon we detected promptly and it spread. We managed to activate control mechanisms and stop an unbridled growth,” he explained.
Venezuela is the only country in the world receiving reverse migration amid the pandemic, a phenomenon that has been silenced by media corporations, complained the Venezuelan president.
“If we did not have the trocheros, Venezuela would have Vietnam’s, Cuba’s and China’s rates. With the measures we have adopted, we have kept the curve flattened,” he said.
Regarding the COVID-19 region’s situation, President Maduro referred to Colombia, a neighboring country that features a high exponential growth and currently ranks 8th worldwide with around 12,000 cases per day and a total of more than 533,000 COVID-19 cases.
Regarding Brazil, the country with the second highest number of cases in the world, it features 50,000 new COVID-19 cases per day and more than 3.5 million cases.
“It is a painful, serious situation,” said President Maduro.
“In Venezuela, we have made a great effort thanks to the Medical Brigades, the Public Health System, and now we are starting to regain control. We did not have an exponential growth like Colombia’s and Brazil’s,” he said.
Venezuela has managed to save lives with proper, timely treatments. “We have the world’s best treatments. We have brought them here. It has cost us three times more due to the criminal U.S. blockade, sanctions and persecution.”