Caracas Chronicles

• After finding no new cases for the second Saturday in April, Jorge Rodríguez said that in the last 24 hours, 29 new coronavirus cases were confirmed, a new record ever since the first case in Venezuela was confirmed (total: 256; recovered: 117).The new cases were detected in the states of Nueva Esparta (21), Miranda (5) and by entries through the border (3). According to Rodríguez, until Sunday they had done 330,200 PCR tests, for a total of 336,169 tests, which means 11,206 per million inhabitants. Fun fact, Rodríguez doesn’t know how to explain the exponential jump of cases in this pandemic. 
• These 21 new cases in Nueva Esparta, said Rodríguez, originated at Margarita’s Baseball Academy, since on March 13th, three citizens carrying the virus arrived in a flight from the Dominican Republic. One of them is a director on the Academy and a scout from an important Major League Baseball team that later tested positive in the U.S. This means that, on March 13th, the epidemiology barrier in Maiquetía failed. Over a month later, Rodríguez announced that they’re checking the list of passengers on the flight to Margarita on March 14th, to test them for COVID-19. Maduro decreed a curfew in Nueva Esparta, from 8:00 p.m. on Sunday, April 19th until 10:00 a.m. on April 20th. For the next few days, the curfew will begin at 4:00 p.m. and will remain in place until the outbreak subsides. He also ordered quarantine for inhabitants of the Acevedo municipality, while authorities search for possible cases. 
• The regime’s actions are concerning. There have been 42 cases so far and the state treats them like criminals, saying they disobeyed authority and they attacked the regime’s epidemic performance.  If you get sick, you’re guilty and the state punishes you. The Public Ministry opened a case against five members of the academy on Friday and the ANC-imposed prosecutor general decided to publicly ridicule them, on Friday and Saturday. Contagion can’t be perceived as a deliberate action, subject to punishment, because it leads to discrimination and hiding of the symptoms. 
• Jorge Rodríguez also exhorted Nueva Esparta governor Alfredo Díaz to stop instilling fear and causing disorderly conduct. He warned him “to play nice” because the Public Ministry and the courts will act against every officer who doesn’t comply with anti-coronavirus protocols. Maduro also complained about the parents of the teenagers who caught coronavirus in the academy and held governor Alfredo Díaz responsible for the outbreak in the state. Alfredo Díaz asked chavismo to work together and expressed his disposition to “execute any plan that guarantees and preserves the peace of Neoespartanos.” 
• Maduro said he’s willing to reach an agreement to bring humanitarian aid to the country: “To those who sent messages publicly or privately, my answer is this: we’re ready.” In an interview for Argentina’s Radio AM 750, Nicolás mentioned pushing back the parliamentary election due in 2020. “I don’t know if we’ll have elections this year, because we have this priority. It would be irresponsible to say today that there has to be an election.”
• Without fuel for funerary transport, there’s no way for cemeteries and cremation facilities to operate, creating a new sanitary problem because of the collapse of pathology waste services. 
• There have been reports in several states about repression of protests against Venezuelans’ general conditions: no cooking gas, severe power cuts, no water, no transport, no fuel and no food. 
• Journalist Eduardo Galindo Peña, his wife and his nephew were released from jail. Galindo’s measures demand he goes to court every eight days. 
• The new coronavirus has caused at least 165,154 deaths. From the moment the epidemic started, 2,402,798 cases have been registered. In the last 24 hours, the countries registering more deaths have been the U.S., UK and Italy. The U.S. has had 40,585 deaths. Latin America surpassed 101,000 cases of COVID-19 on Sunday and over 5,000 deaths. Brazil is the country with the most cases (38,654 cases and 2,462 deaths), even though specialists estimate a higher number of infections, because of the low number of tests that have been done. Peru (15,628 cases and 400 deaths); Chile (10,088 cases and 133 deaths); and Ecuador (9,468 cases and 474 deaths) follow.    

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The official narrative about COVID-19 allows for a major contradiction in its structure: a lot of tests, very few cases, a lot of recovered patients. Using this formula every day, it’s impossible to convince citizens of the “advantages” of staying home without basic services or food, which people need money to get. Looks like it’s harder to understand the dangers of coronavirus than it is to understand failures in CLAP box distribution.