US deportation flights to Guatemala are driving up the country’s Covid-19 caseload, according to the country’s health minister, who said that on one flight about 75% of the deportees tested positive for the virus.
Hugo Monroy said that the United States had become the “Wuhan of the Americas”
“We must not stigmatize, but I have to speak clearly. The arrival of deportees who have tested positive has really increased the number of [coronavirus] cases,” he said on Tuesday. “There are really flights where the deportees arrive … with fever – and they get on the planes that way,” said Monroy on Tuesday. “We automatically evaluate them here and test them and many of them have come back positive.”
the presidential spokesman, Carlos Sandoval, told reporters that Monroy was referring to a March flight on which “between 50% and 75% of the passengers during all their time in isolation and quarantine have come back positive”.
he Guatemalan government had asked the United States to not send more than 25 deportees per flight, to give them health examinations before departure and to certify that they were not infected.
However, the flights resumed on Monday with 76 migrants onboard the first and 106 on the second. Guatemala’s foreign ministry did not immediately clarify why the US had not complied with its requirements. One of Monday’s flights also included 16 unaccompanied minors, according to the Guatemalan Immigration Institute.
Since January, the US has deported nearly 12,000 Guatemalans, including more than 1,200 children.
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