Coronavirus: Colombia closes borders with Venezuela

country's border with Venezuela and restricted the entry of foreigners who have been to Europe and Asia in the past 14 days, as measures to stop the spread of Covid-19, a disease caused by new coronavirus. The measures took effect this Saturday, 14.

"With this we strengthen the protection of our country and take an additional step to face this global pandemic", declared the president the day before. According to the latest report by the World Health Organization (WHO), the country registered 13 confirmed cases. Neighboring Venezuela announced it had two confirmed cases.

On Friday, the President of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, declared "state of alarm", after the first confirmations of Covid-19 in the country. "We are starting a collective quarantine, a social quarantine," Maduro said on national radio and TV after signing the alarm decree, a form of state of exception that grants him special powers.

The government has suspended classes "at all levels" in the country starting next Monday and "all types of public meetings" are prohibited. The Ministry of Interior and Justice of the Country has indicated that the use of a mask will be mandatory at all pedestrian border control points, as is the case of the country's border with Brazil.

The two confirmed cases in Venezuela are of a 41-year-old Venezuelan woman, who had visited the United States, Italy and Spain, and of a 52-year-old man, who was in Spain. Both live in the state of Miranda, in the north of the country. "These two cases are already absolutely isolated, direct contacts are determined and the entire network of indirect contacts is being verified," said the government.