Venezuela announces ‘radical quarantine’ as COVID-19 surge

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro announced two weeks of what he called a "radical quarantine" and suspended the celebration of Holy Week.

'I announce that Holy Week will be in radical quarantine again this year. So we are going to have fourteen days, two weeks of radical quarantine," he said on Sunday, referring to a period that would include the Christian holiday of Easter. About 88 percent of Venezuela's 28.5 million people are Christians, the vast majority of whom are Catholics.

Maduro had earlier announced that Holy Week would be flexible this year but followed the stricter approach as COVID cases increased in the country and amid threats of the variant of the virus detected in Brazil.

Venezuela, which had struggled with inadequate health infrastructure as well as medicine and food shortages before the pandemic, reported a relatively low toll on the coronavirus, with 151,123 cases and 1,493 deaths confirmed so far.

Maduro has long blamed the country's serious situation for US sanctions. Washington has maintained the sanctions do not affect the supply of medicine and food.

Maduro reported Sunday that the country has 8,872 active COVID-19 cases.

Venezuela has struggled with the introduction of vaccines, which began using the Russian Sputnik V and China's Synopharm samples in February.

Caracas also reserved between 1.4 million and 2.4 million doses of AstraZeneca through the World Health Organization's COVAX plan. Last week, however, Maduro announced that the country would not use the AstraZeneca vaccine due to concerns that the vaccine was causing blood clots.