Vice President of Bolivia, cardinal and six ministers infected with COVID-19

The vice president of Bolivia, David Choquehuanca, the cardinal, Toribio Ticona, and six ministers contracted COVID-19 amid a spike of infections in the fourth wave of pandemic that is hitting the country.

The Bolivian Episcopal Conference (CEB) indicated in a statement that Ticona, an 84-year-old prelate, “has been diagnosed as positive for COVID-19” and “is receiving adequate medical attention.”

Earlier, the Ministry of the Presidency had reported that Vice President Choquehuanca contracted COVID-19 for the third time.

It also pointed out that Foreign Minister Rogelio Mayta and the ministers of Government (Eduardo del Castillo), Defense (Edmundo Novillo), Development Planning (Gabriela Mendoza), Justice (Iván Lima) and Education (Edgar Pary) “have been diagnosed as positive for COVID-19 ″.

The office of the Presidency stated that all these authorities “are stable and complying with the isolation protocol, performing their functions through teleworking or remote work.”

The government maintained that all are vaccinated.

Choquehuanca, a politician from the Aymara indigenous people, revealed on December 30 that he contracted the coronavirus twice and that he overcame the disease with the use of ancestral medicine.

The Foreign Ministry reported on Monday that Mayta tested positive for COVID-19 in Argentina, after participating in a meeting of ministers of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC).

Bolivia, with almost 12 million inhabitants, is going through a new peak of infections, with historical records. Until Monday there were more than 686,000 sick and almost 20,000 dead so far in the pandemic.