The Governing Council of the Canary Islands will discuss the possibility today, of making the entry and exit of the islands declared at alert Level 3 for contagion more flexible by requiring passengers to have a negative PCR or antigen test, hence allowing inter-island travel. This measure, which was applied over Easter, would allow islanders to travel for pleasure and not just essential reasons from Gran Canaria and Tenerife.
The Canary Islands Minister of Health, Blas Trujillo, announced yesterday that the Government will analyze the measure, at the request of the Ministry of Tourism and the Canary Islands Association of Travel Agencies.
The zero incidence of the increase in inter-island mobility during Easter in the epidemic curve of the non-capital islands is one of the reasons encouraging regional authorities to allow travel with a negative test. In fact, yesterday, this possibility was discussed in a meeting with Public Health technicians, as Torres advocates keeping screening in ports and airports beyond the state of alarm to contain the spread of the virus.
In the same vein, the President of the Canary Islands, Ángel Víctor Torres, believes that "control is necessary" and the Canary Islands "will look for formulas so that it can be maintained", with screening, for example, so that the virus isn’t brought into the archipelago from outside.
On the other hand, the Government will review today the levels of contagion risk on each island, taking into account the epidemic indicators. In this regard, Trujillo pointed out that the transmission of the virus in the islands "continues to decline slowly but steadily."
Regarding the possibility of Gran Canaria going down to level 2, which has shown medium risk parameters since Monday, he said that the application of the scales is not automatic and that, in addition to waiting for the decline in infections to consolidate, other indices must be observed, such as ICU occupancy, which is at high risk in Gran Canaria.
The Ministry of Health yesterday notified the death of a 73-year-old man from Covid in Tenerife, with which there are now 713 fatalities of the epidemic in the Canary Islands. In addition, the archipelago added 199 infections, 107 in Tenerife, 68 in Gran Canaria, twelve in Lanzarote, eight in Fuerteventura and four in El Hierro. Of the 4,078 active cases yesterday on the islands, 396 were hospitalized; 313 in wards and 83 in ICU.
