Published Tuesday, March 31, 2020 

By the A.M. Costa Rica staff

Social Security authorities announced a budget of $11.5 million to be spent on the purchase of supplies to protect doctors, nurses, and other hospital employees from getting infected with the coronavirus covid-19.

According to the authorities, among the supplies that are most needed are gloves, gowns, surgical masks, and glasses.

"We face a global emergency whereby all countries are in the same condition of Costa Rica of constantly searching for obtaining personal protection supplies," said Román Macaya, president of Social Security.

The budget approved by Social Security already invested in the purchase of 1,244,790 units of N-95 masks, 3,390,448 surgical masks, 700,197 safety glasses and 723,966 waterproof clothes, among others.

In the latest report released on Monday, authorities from the Health Ministry confirmed 16 new cases rising to a total of 330 patients in the country.

Of those patients, 15 are being treated in public hospitals, seven of them have been reported in very delicate health conditions and are kept in intensive care.

The patient’s ages range from 1 to 87 with an average age of 40. Of those 13 are children under the age of 13, 293 are between 18 and 70 years old, and 24 are elder patients over the age of 70.

Of those infected, 160 are women (48%) and 170 are men (52%). It was reported 303 infected cases are Costa Ricans and 27 are foreigners.

Four coronavirus patients fully recovered. Two of those were U.S. citizens who were reported to have left the country.

Seven patients are already in the process of receiving results from their latest medical tests hoping to be cleared and classified as fully recovered from the virus, as well as not being a threat to the public.

As was previously reported, two patients hospitalized in intensive care at San Rafael Hospital in Alajuela Province, both 87-year-old seniors, have died due to the coronavirus covid-19.

The virus has spread throughout all the provinces, with cases reported in 52 cantons. The ministry has enabled a map of the country on the UNED University website, where the number of infected people in each Canton is updated daily.

Since the virus was detected in the country in the first week of March, 3,362 people have been ruled out.


As of today, the pandemic has killed 37,639 people around the world, according to recent statistics reported by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University.

Scientists worldwide are accelerating efforts to develop coronavirus treatments that are primarily focused on adapting existing drugs intended to fight other diseases, reported Voice of America News.

“The shortest path to treatment, we think, is to repurpose something that already exists based on our knowledge of the mechanisms of action," said Hana Akselrod, an assistant professor of infectious diseases at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences.  

This new strain of coronavirus causes the disease, covid-19, a respiratory illness that can be fatal for an estimated 2% of the population, especially older people and those with underlying medical conditions, such as diabetes and high blood pressure. The covid-19 virus is related to other deadly viruses that have caused relatively recent widespread outbreaks: SARS, severe acute respiratory syndrome, and MERS, and Middle East respiratory syndrome.

Infectious disease experts are confident that a vaccine can be developed to prevent coronavirus infections. But trials and testing to develop a safe and effective vaccine for global production of the treatment could take a year or longer.

No proven coronavirus treatment currently exists for infected patients. Although a range of drugs are being tested that fall under three main categories of intended results: neutralize the virus itself, alleviate some of its life-threatening symptoms, and boost a patient’s immune system to fight off the infection.

Older malaria drugs, chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, are being studied in a number of countries to possibly prevent coronavirus infection or to kill off the virus in early stages of infection. This is a drug combination that President Donald Trump called a “game changer” - but scientists caution more study is needed to verify results.  

For more information about studies investigating covid-19 treatments visit the Voice of America News site.