Yucatán’s beaches officially open to the public again Wednesday

Yucatán’s beaches are set to reopen Wednesday after a two-week closure.

Health authorities decided to close all public beaches in Yucatán following a spike in COVID-19 hospitalizations in the state. 

But only the beaches in Progreso and Telchac actually implemented the restrictions. Coastal communities including Sisal and Celestun kept their beaches open. 

Authorities are urging beachgoers to use common sense and follow social distancing guidelines.

Business owners along Progreso’s boardwalk hope that this most recent closure will have been the last. Critics of beach closures argue that restricting access to public spaces while allowing malls to stay open makes no sense as a strategy to fight COVID-19.

“We were just starting to recover a bit and then they shut us down again. Who knows how much more of this we can take,” a waiter from a well-known Progreso seafood restaurant told Por Esto. 

Yucatán and 20 other Mexican states still remain at orange, the color on the epidemiological traffic light indicating severe risk of COVID-19 infection. 

And after indicating a series of positive trends, Chiapas has turned back to green, the lowest level of alert on Mexico’s epidemiological COVID-19 scale.