Petro will decree economic emergency due to yellow fever: Is Bogotá at risk?

President Gustavo Petro announced that he will decree economic and health emergency in the country due to an increase in the case of the yellow feverunleashed by the female mosquito Aedes aegypti.

(Read: President Petro will decree economic and health emergency for yellow fever).

“I am going to decree the economic emergency, after the health. But not because of what the smuggers, washing machines and tankers say, which are the ones who have been dominating Colombia’s economic policy, but for something simple and forceful: life. We are again before a virus. This is the yellow fever virus unleashed by the female mosquito called Aedes aegypti”Said the president in his X account this Tuesday, April 15.

In his message, the Head of State also assured that “I worry that in Bogotá, the district has not wanted to configure the basic health teams that are essential to make a rapid vaccination throughout the city. The speed of the vaccine is the key”.

(See: Yellow Fever: Identify what the vaccination points are in their location).

Given this question, the Secretary of Health of Bogotá, Gerson Bermont, responded to the Colombian president through a thread in the social network X, in which he defended the work that the district is doing to avoid the expansion of the virus.

“Lord president, it is really difficult to answer you maintaining a technical line, but I will try to respect the dignity that you represent but that undermined with each elucubration of issues that you do not master and that your technical teams belittle and hide you by fear”Bermont said.

According to the District Health Secretary, Bogotá is not endemic for yellow fever, but still the Mayor’s Office has accelerated the vaccination of all immunoprevenable diseases, including justly yellow fever.

For Gerson Bermont, not everything is resolved with “Economic emergencies”.

“The INSMANTLED all its technical teams and that does not solve it with silver, it solves it only with respect for the technical and scientific abilities outside ideological elements. Listen to technicians, not the activists,”the district official added.

According to calculations from the Ministry of Health, between January and April 14, 2025, Bogotá has vaccinated 68,817 people against yellow fever, 26% more than in the same period of 2024.

For its part, only in April we had 19,381 doses applied.

(Besides: They declare emergency situation due to increased cases of yellow fever in Colombia).

Likewise, the doctor in Epidemiology and Undersecretary of Public Health of Bogotá, Julián Fernández Niño, said that vaccination must be prioritized in endemic areas, but that the capital, for its climate and height, is not.

He also supported the figures from Bermont who said that in Bogotá they are vaccinating more people than before.

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