The Canary Islands Government will decide today what measures to apply to contain the pandemic in Tenerife to prevent the incidence rates from increasing, and the knock-on effect that the Islands will no longer be classed as a safe destination for tourists. Since Monday the IA7 for the islands has exceeded 50, a threshold set by Germany to consider a territory as safe, due to the situation in Tenerife.
This increase is worrying for everyone as highlighted by the president of Ashotel, Jorge Marichal, who yesterday asked the Government to act ‘harshly’ to prevent the high number of infections in Tenerife ‘ruining the summer for everyone else’.
"Although this will not be a good summer in terms of numbers of tourist arrivals, we cannot ruin the little activity we may have, or drag the rest of the islands into a disaster," said Marichal yesterday afternoon.
The Government has not announced what type of restrictions will be applied in Tenerife, although Public Health has proposed to regulate leisure and sports, since the highest incidence of the virus is being detected among those less than 49 years of age.
The president of the Tenerife Cabildo, Pedro Martín, yesterday urged the Canarian Minister of Health, Blas Trujillo, to tighten the measures without raising the island to alert level 3, because of the detrimental effect on the local economy.
Martín will hold a meeting tomorrow with the island's mayors when he will ask for greater control of the ‘illegal’ gatherings led by young people, as he announced in statements to Efe. In fact, it has been highlighted that one of the factors that could be influencing the greater spread of the virus in Tenerife is the youth of its population, said Trujillo in the Canarian Parliament.
“In a comparative study between Gran Canaria and Tenerife, one of the most outstanding elements of the report is the concentration of cases in the population under 49 years of age. Tenerife has almost 50,000 more people than Gran Canaria in that age group,“ the councillor stressed yesterday.
Canaries now has 4th highest incidence rates in Spain:
The amount of cases in Tenerife has also worsened the situation of the epidemic for the Canary Islands in relation to the rest of Spain.
Yesterday the archipelago became the region with the fourth-highest cumulative incidence rate over seven days, having been the sixth highest less than a week ago:
Andalusia (75 cases per 100,000 inhabitants)
La Rioja (70)
Cantabria (65).
Canary Islands (53)
In addition, the Canary Islands continues to move further away from the national average of this indicator, which yesterday stood at 42.97 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, that is, 10.3 points below the IA7 of the archipelago
