The spokesman for the Canary Islands Government, Julio Pérez, said yesterday that "it is possible to lower some of the restrictions that affect the hospitality sector in Tenerife”, which since Saturday has moved into Level 3 restrictions on the island due to the bad evolution of the pandemic and increase in new cases.
He confirmed that they are hopeful that the meeting of the Technical Commission this afternoon, made up of representatives from AERO and Fauca, for Tenerife, and FEHT and AEBCR, for Las Palmas, will make suggestions and reach a quick solution, that prevents it from being decided in the Supreme Court (TSJC), as AERO have already filed a demand, and they realise that it is time to negotiate and “make more flexible restrictive measures for the sector.”
Pérez said that there has already been contact between representatives of the hospitality sector and councillors, vice councillors and even the president of the Canary Islands himself, Ángel Víctor Torres, and admitted that the Government “cannot ignore the manifestations of the impact that the level 3 has on the sector”.
He said that “if an agreement is made, it would be the first time that the government would agree, at Level 3, to accept that it is going to make measures more flexible.”
However, he acknowledged that the Governing Council meeting yesterday did not specify any measures in this regard, since only the data of infections registered in the Islands were analyzed, which he called "worrying", as in the last 24 hours almost 200 new cases have been notified, most of them (81%) in Tenerife.
Pérez acknowledged that the Government has to be "sensitive to the proposals of the sector”, but warned that it is necessary to "combine the objective of reducing the number of infections to make tourist openness possible, causing economic damage that is minimally tolerable".
In any case, he made it clear that the analysis of the situation has to start with the evolution of the data first, and not the economic impact, insisting that "the first priority is to reduce contagions in Tenerife.”
