Venezuela Limits Covid Tests, Then Claims Low Rates: LatAm Wrap
- Maduro won’t let private and university labs offer the exams
- Some accuse him of controlling the news while people get sick
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With Covid-19 cases erupting across Venezuela, the government of Nicolas Maduro has restricted testing to two state laboratories around Caracas, preventing private and university labs from participating and raising fears that coronavirus will go undiagnosed while the country claims a low caseload.
“They are controlling epidemiological information as if it were a state secret,” said Felix Oletta, a doctor specializing in infectology who was health minister in the late 1990s. “Implementing social control through a monopoly of information is more important to them than shortening the diagnosis period.”