The President of the Canary Islands, Ángel Víctor Torres, is going to issue a new decree with which the curfew will be extended until 11:00 p.m. on the island of Tenerife for seven more days, although for the moment no additional measures will be adopted. This was announced at the press conference after the Governing Council by the spokesman for the Canarian Executive, Julio Pérez, who indicated that the situation in Tenerife continues to be a "main concern" of the regional government, because "if it is not corrected, it could produce an impact that will overwhelm the island."
In fact, that "impact has already occurred this Thursday, when the United Kingdom announced its decision to remove the Canary Islands from its list of "safe" destinations again. The reason is that the archipelago has once again exceeded the barrier of 50 cases per 100,000 inhabitants in seven days, and it has done so dragged down by the data from Tenerife, which has an incidence of 98.49 in the last week. All the other islands are well below that limit of 50 cases. The second island with the highest incidence per inhabitant in the last seven days is Lanzarote, and this Thursday it stood at 24.95. Even behind is Gran Canaria, with 17.39.
Regarding why they have agreed to establish new restrictions in Tenerife, the government spokesman has indicated that Public Health technicians consider it necessary to wait 14 days to know if the measures already adopted on the island can produce their effects. Since last Sunday, group meetings have already been limited to four people and the prohibition of serving at bar and restaurant bars has been established.
"We will count those days minute by minute because the impact can overwhelm the scope of the non-compliant," Julio Pérez insisted. In addition, he pointed out that some possible hotbeds, such as collective transport or shopping centers, have been checked and it seems that they are not experiencing "either excess capacity or infections."
For all these reasons, Julio Pérez once again stated that non-compliance with anti-covid regulations would be occurring in the private sphere, where the repressive action of the authorities is much more complicated than in the public sphere, hence he has made a new appeal to the population of Tenerife to strictly comply with the regulations.
In his appearance, the spokesman also regretted the British Government's decision to remove the islands from the list of places with which it has 'safe corridors' in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, so that those who return to the United Kingdom from the archipelago from 4 a.m. on Saturday, December 12, will have to quarantine.
In this regard, he admitted that there was a fear that things like this could happen - in fact, the Canary Islands already faced this same situation when the incidence soared between the end of August and the beginning of September - and hopes that this decision "can be reversed", since the British market is the most important for the archipelago, followed by the German market.
Julio Pérez stated that this type of decision only confirms that the contagion figures of an island like Tenerife can end up producing an effect on all the others, and added that from now on it only remains to be seen what measures can be adopted to rectify this situation.
The spokesman stressed that so far the relationship with the British Embassy in Spain has been "fluid", which will allow "sending the information that is useful so that the British Government can reverse its decision."