The president of the Canary Islands, Ángel Víctor Torres, assured this Monday that his Executive will take all kinds of measures to control the coronavirus figures, trying to avoid new confinements, because they would generate “tremendous poverty” and other “health problems”.
For Torres, it is a “truism” that if a confinement is decreed, the coronavirus figures will be better in 15 or 20 days, but he remarked that “there would be people who with the confinement would have health problems” and that “the economy would collapse” .
“We would have tremendous poverty effects. That is why we have to make sure that there is some normal economic activity and that we lead a normal life with the emergency of the coronavirus until the vaccine does not arrive,” he remarked in an interview on Cadena Cope in the Canary Islands collected by Europa Press.
In any case, the president did not rule out anything and said that there is always a possibility of confinement when the figures exceed 600 cases per 100,000 inhabitants. “There would be a technical proposal and a decision would be made,” he said.
The Canarian president defended that up to now the Islands have acted in a “proportional and according to the circumstances” and that the “key” right now is “compliance” with the rules approved with “responsibility” because, he explained, now it is it has replaced the problem with nightlife with that of the surroundings of family and friends.
Regarding the arrival of immigrants to the Canary Islands, President Torres said that he has spoken with the Government Delegation and with the Ministry itself to know in detail “and in writing” what is the surveillance of the coasts of the Islands.
They have explained to Torres that what has allowed some boats to arrive at the beaches in recent days is that they “camouflage themselves as fishing and it is more difficult for the Moroccan Gendarmerie” to intercept them.
In any case, the president said that with the Health data in hand “there has been no contagion” of coronavirus “with any immigrant” because a strict protocol is applied. And that when they have arrived without control, their search is also executed to proceed in the same way.
On the Records of Temporary Employment Regulation (ERTE), which have allowed to overcome higher unemployment figures throughout the country, clouds arise from September, to begin with its continuity, something that the president is “convinced” that it is going to achieve, and second for the decrease in salary to be received from the sixth month.
For the president “it is not fair that after 6 months in ERTE the salaries fall and being in ERTE you earn less than in ERE”. Thus, he argued that the Canary Islands is precisely one of the regions that “most accurate” due to its insularity.
For the president there has hardly been tourism because “there is fear” and because the countries of origin are also suffering and seeing how to deal with the pandemic, but he remarked that “undoubtedly” they are working together with the central government to give the best possible figures for the season winter, high for the islands.
Of course, he stressed that if someone thinks about “figures from previous years” this now “is impossible.” Regarding the security measures in ports and airports, he explained that they continue working to achieve “maximum control” -not renouncing the PCR tests at origin or destination- given the island’s consideration of the Canary Islands, for which he said he expected a “favorable response” .
