The Colombian government has declared a national health and economic emergency in response to a severe yellow fever outbreak that has resulted in 74 confirmed cases and 34 deaths.
The government urging people to get vaccinated and take precautions while traveling over Easter weekend.
The mosquito-borne virus, which typically causes fever, muscle pains, nausea, and headaches, is endemic to multiple countries in South America, including Colombia, where the current outbreak has had a high mortality rate.
While speaking on the state-run Radio Nacional de Colombia on Wednesday, April 16th, 2025, the Minister of Health, Guillermo Jaramillo explained the emergency decree.
He said, “It’s a disease with a mortality rate of nearly 50% among those infected, the virus has also spread beyond the rural regions traditionally considered at risk for outbreaks, “making it a threat to more communities,” he said.
The most severe situation is in the coffee-growing Tolima area, where the number of detected yellow fever cases rose from four in September 2024 to 22 by mid-April, according to Jaramillo.
“We are going to require the carrying of the vaccination card for people entering or leaving Colombia,” he told the radio station.
Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro announced an economic emergency on top of the health decree, and called on citizens to get vaccinated.
“People who have not been vaccinated should not go to high-risk areas during Easter: for now, the coffee area,” he wrote on Facebook on Wednesday.
Petro blamed climate change for further spreading the virus by bringing the disease-carrying Aedes aegypti mosquitoes to higher altitudes.
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