The Government of Colombia announced that it will reopen its river and land borders with Venezuela, closed since March 2020 to stop the coronavirus. In a resolution, the Interior Ministry ordered “the gradual reopening” of the 2,200-kilometre border crossings.

The measure enters into force at 00:00 (07:00, in Spain) on Wednesday and annuls a presidential decree that had extended the closure until September 1.. On May 19, the country reopened the steps that connect it with Panama, Peru, Brazil and Ecuador, also closed to prevent the spread of the virus.. Venezuela, which broke off diplomatic relations with Bogotá in February 2019, after Duque recognized the opposition Juan Guaidó as interim president of Venezuela to the detriment of Nicolás Maduro, whom he considers a “dictator”, was initially excluded from this measure.

Maduro last week opposed an eventual “unilateral” reopening of the border by Colombia. Close to a million undocumented Venezuelans are today in the process of regularization in the neighboring country. The closure of the border crossings was initially decreed on March 16, 2020, ten days after the first case of coronavirus was registered in the country of 50 million inhabitants.. Although the country is experiencing a third peak of the pandemic that has been even more aggressive than the previous ones, it has been relaxing most of the restrictions imposed to tackle the virus in the face of the economic collapse.

In proportion to its population, Colombia is the country with the third most deaths from coronavirus in Latin America and the Caribbean, behind Brazil and Peru.. Almost 90,000 people have died from the pandemic and more than 3.4 million have been infected.