Covid-19: Chilean president fined for maskless selfie

 

The Chilean president’s flies are going badly. A photo widely relayed on social networks shows Sebastián Piñera posing with a smile next to a young girl, a beautiful beach in the background. If he wears a hat and sunglasses to protect himself from UV rays, no trace of a mask, yet mandatory outside in a country hit like so many others by the novel coronavirus pandemic. For this blunder, the Head of State was also fined 2,551,450 pesos (nearly 2,900 euros) for non-compliance with wearing a mask, as reported by BFM TV, Saturday, December 19, 2020.

The photo, which has gone viral, was taken on December 5 on a beach in Zapallar, a province north of the capital Santiago. Sebastián Piñera explains that that day, he decided to go “for a walk” on the beach, which he had not done “since last year”. “The walk was quite lonely until some people recognized me and asked me to take a picture,” he continues in a message posted on his Instagram account, before apologizing: “I should have put on the mask , but due to the speed with which the events happened I did not, this is a mistake that I regret. ”

Resumption of the epidemic

This controversy comes as the metropolitan region of Santiago, where 7.1 of the 15 million Chileans live, reinstated restrictive measures in early December following the increase in the number of new cases of Covid-19. 16,051 deaths have been recorded in the country since the start of the epidemic, according to the results of the American University Johns-Hopkins.

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