Young, elegant women wear protective masks on their faces, at a hotel in Managua, in preparation for the Miss Nicaragua 2020 beauty pageant, scheduled for August 8.
The competition was originally supposed to take place last May, and has been made possible today because of the country's authorities ’refusal to take quarantine measures to combat the spread of the epidemic. However, the competition will take place without an audience.
"We have a strict health safety protocol, which participants should respect fully," said event coordinator Consuelo Alvarado. She emphasized: "During training, we require physical separation, use of masks, and hand washing regularly." She explained: "During the first months of preparation we canceled all the actual meetings, and we did everything online, lessons, communications and meetings."
And the production team reduced the number of people to the minimum, during the most necessary meetings, "while a medical team believes in monitoring the health of the participants and the organizers," Al-Farado said.
According to the official figures, the health authorities in Nicaragua have recorded 3439 cases of emerging coronavirus so far, 108 of which have resulted in deaths in a country of 6.2 million people. However, the Citizen Observatory, which is made up of doctors in particular, believes that the outcome is not accurate, and indicates that there are 8,500 infections and 2260 deaths, suspected to be caused by the virus.
The event coordinator:
"We have a strict protocol, in terms of health safety, that participants should respect fully."