PHILIPSBURG – Residents of Curaçao, Aruba and Bonaire can only go to Sint Maarten from Monday if they can hand over a negative PCR test that is not older than 72 hours. Sint Maarten announced on Sunday that it would place the ABC islands on the list of countries with a high risk. On Sint Maarten (more than 40,000 inhabitants) there have been very few corona-infected patients for a long time. On Saturday there were eighteen active infections.
Curaçao, Aruba and Bonaire are faced with a significant increase in the number of corona infections. This is already clearly noticeable in the local hospitals on Bonaire and Aruba, where other medical care is at risk. Bonaire has already sent four corona patients who need intensive care to Curaçao.
Curaçao (nearly 160,000 inhabitants) had registered 1,000 infected corona patients on Saturday, Aruba (more than 100,000 inhabitants) had 417 and Bonaire (more than 20,000 inhabitants) 434. There is a curfew on all three islands. On Curaçao and Bonaire it starts at 9 p.m., on Aruba at midnight.
The CMC hospital in Curaçao says that the number of patients infected with Covid-19 is increasing. As a result, non-emergency surgeries scheduled for Monday and Tuesday will in any case be canceled. On Sunday afternoon, 23 patients with a Covid-19 infection were admitted to the hospital, of which eleven are in intensive care. Four patients have been transferred from Bonaire. According to the hospital, it is striking that many relatively young patients, between 30 and 40 years old, have to be admitted to the ICU. According to the hospital, this is a result of the British corona variant on the island.