Briefing

Venezuela is Back to Lockdown Measures

We’re back to the intermittent quarantine that hasn’t prevented high infection and death rates, especially in healthcare workers; The National Assembly is trying to obtain participation in the WHO’s Covax mechanism for vaccination

Naky Soto

Photo: Taiwan News

  • Today, January 4th, the country will return to the 7×7 method, meaning a week of radical quarantine and a week sans quarantine. On Sunday, they said they counted 199 new cases and two new deaths, bringing the total to 114,083 cases and 1,032 deaths they’ve admitted to.
  • According to NGO Médicos Unidos, 296 workers of the health care sector have died from coronavirus. Until January 2nd, 2021, 218 doctors, 52 nurses and 26 other workers of the sector had passed.
  • The National Assembly approved an agreement on the need to participate in the OAS Covax mechanism for vaccination against COVID-19, a plan that demands moving resources and political disposition, explained commissioner Miguel Pizarro, who said they’ll start the procedure to participate. This happens after months of Nicolás’s regime’s refusal to pay the WHO fees to access the vaccination program. The pandemic has caused 1,835,824 deaths in the world and over  84.5 million people have been infected. 
  • Since November, the lawyers and family members of indigenous Pemon activist Salvador Franco, detained for rebellion since 2019, had been denouncing his poor health conditions. For months they waited and demanded he’d be moved to a hospital. The authorities didn’t allow it. A court ordered in December a visit to a health center but the prison ignored that order, as they had done with others. Salvador Franco died in the El Rodeo II jail (Miranda state). Franco was one of 13 Pemones accused of participating in the attack of military facilities in Bolívar state, a crime that chavismo made seem worse by accusing them of terrorism and the stealing of firearms.
  • On Sunday, AN Speaker Juan Guaidó appointed the presidents of 15 permanent commissions that will be part of the National Assembly’s Delegate Commission, the figure that will carry on with the “constitutional and administrative” continuity of the institution, as it decided on December 26th with the reform of the Statute of Transition to Democracy. 
  • A piece published by The Washington Post talks about irregular management of Venezuelan assets abroad. Businessmen Jorge Reyes and Pedro Antar told The Washington Post about meetings with the caretaker government and a list of demands that requested a payment of $750,000 to a company owned by Magin Blasi, brother of Fernando Blasi, an official of the embassy in Washington. But the most serious part of the story points to Javier Troconis, presidential commissioner for Asset Recovery  and Management. The accusations made by Reyes and Antar were reported in September, and back then, the caretaker government issued a communiqué ruling them out because they had no grounds. The internal investigation carried out by a National Assembly committee didn’t find evidence of corruption, but ambassador Carlos Vecchio requested the U.S. government to carry out its own investigation. 
  • Venezuela is still the country with the most persecuted deputies, said on Saturday deputy Delsa Solórzano, citing a report by the Human Rights Committee of the Inter Parliamentary Union. 134 Venezuelan deputies have suffered some kind of human rights violation.
  • NGO Una Ventana a la Libertad reported that almost 60 inmates were taken to their hometown after a mutiny at the Hombre Nuevo El Libertador Center (Tocuyito prison in Carabobo state), protesting hunger.
  • Twitter suspended on Sunday the account of Vladimir Padrino López, Nicolás’s Defense minister, for violating the terms and conditions. 
  • Cape Verde detained two executives that allegedly traveled to Caracas in August 2020, to discuss the situation of Colombian citizen Alex Saab with Nicolás. Fernando Gil Évora and Carlos Anjos were detained and the Judicial Police raided their homes and offices in a simultaneous operation.
Briefing

Naky Soto

Naky gets called Naibet at home and at the bank. She coordinates training programs for an NGO. She collects moments and turns them into words. She has more stories than freckles.

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