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Published Tuesday, November 3, 2020
Social Security reopens headquarters
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
After seven months of having suspended access to the main Social Security building, the institution reopened its customer service at the headquarters located in San José downtown as well as the 77 branches that are throughout the country.
According to Luis Diego Calderón -Villalobos, financial manager, the reopening is due to the government authorities having stated that the country has entered a new phase of the pandemic, which will allow the reactivation of services provided by the health organization.
Both the headquarters and the branches will be open from 7:00 a.m. to 4.00 p.m. Monday to Friday. Services related to health insurance consultations will be offered to insured persons, to business owners as well as to persons interested in acquiring government medical insurance.
To avoid crowds, the authorities call on the public to use the online platform to handle their due diligence and thus reduce the possibility of contagion by covid-19. All services to the insured and the general public are also being provided online through the Social Security website.
Since the Presidential Decree of National Health Emergency due to the covid-19 pandemic, Social Security has attended the vast majority of patients infected by the virus.
From March 6 to Sept. 30, medical attention has been given to 410,003 people who have been related by covid-19. Of these, 14% were foreigners who were treated in Social Security clinics, emergency rooms and hospitals.
The contagion of covid-19 continues to quickly spread all over the country. On Monday, the Ministry of Health reported the following updated statistics of the covid-19 contagion in the country:
• 540 new covid-19 cases, bringing the total to 41,724 active cases.
• 17,459 foreign-born people have been infected with a total of 111,257 cases since March, approximately 15.7% of the total cases. Of these, authorities confirmed the death of 32 foreign-born patients.
• 467 patients are being treated in public hospitals, where 191 patients are in ICU’s in delicate health conditions (ages range from a 1-year-old to a 93-year-old). And 276 patients are in recovery rooms. Many of the remaining infected patients are quarantined in their homes.
• 68,129 coronavirus patients have fully recovered, which is a 61.2% recovery rate of the total cases since March.
• 1,404 deaths of people infected with covid-19, approximately 1.3% death rate of the total cases since March. Of these 535 women and 869 men. The ages range from a 9-year-old to a 100-year-old person.
In October authorities stopped providing the updated statistics on people who have been ruled out and the number of medical covid-19 tests that have been made.
Readers can see the updated number of total
patients in each district at the National Distance
Education University on its Covid-19 Map.
According to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering, CSSE, at Johns Hopkins University, the pandemic has killed 1,206,069 people worldwide.
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Have you heard of expats having problems paying the Social Security health services? We would like to know
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