Judge ordered the government to answer COVID-19 questions by Tuesday May 4th!

The constitutional and judicial system is working. We can all breathe a bit easier. The government has until Tuesday May 3rd to answer our questions. Read the judges order below:

PROCEDURE
: AMPARO REMIGRATION (AMPARO REMIGRATION) PARTY: MINISTRY OF HEALTH

CONSTITUTIONAL CHAMBER OF THE SUPREME COURT OF JUSTICE. San José, at nineteen hours and twenty-one minutes of April twenty-third, two thousand and twenty-one.

In view of the amparo appeal filed in case No. 21-007845- 0007-CO, filed against the MINISTRY OF HEALTH, it is resolved: in terms of Articles 43, 44 and 45 of the Law of Constitutional Jurisdiction, report the director of Legal Affairs of the Ministry of Health, on the facts alleged by the appellants, in summary: that through the e-mail: Correspondence – Legal Affairs daj.correspondencia@misalud.go.cr, addressed on March 01, 2021, they requested the following information of their interest to the appealed authority: “(…) 1. Please provide all data, communications, memoranda, notices, alerts, etc. between Costa Rica and employees of the World Health Organization or the “W.H.O.” from December 2015 to the present. 2. Please provide the scientific evidence on which you rely to justify all the sanitary restrictions you ordered. 3. Do you have any evidence that contradicts the efficacy of the closures, movement restrictions or mask mandates? If yes, please list all contradictory or controverting evidence and why you have disregarded it. 4. Please provide evidence that the driving restrictions you have ordered actually achieve the intended result of slowing or stopping the spread of the virus, rather than forcing people to use unsafe public transportation that may increase cases of covid-19. 5. Please provide evidence that the business closures you ordered actually achieve the intended result of slowing or stopping the spread of the virus. 6. Please provide evidence that the indoor mask mandates you ordered actually achieve the intended result of slowing or stopping the spread of the virus. 7. Do you consider that there is any evidence outside of Costa Rica to show that covid-19 cases increased after the facemasks were imposed, such as in the United States in California? Are you aware that places like South Korea, which have no restrictions, became a model of how to contain Covid-19 effectively and that places with restrictions have more cases of covid-19 than some places like South Korea and Florida USA which have no restrictions? Please provide 5 years of statistics on the average number of deaths from flu, influenza and other viruses in Costa Rica. 10. How do you know that Covid-19 testing or death counts are always accurate? Do you rely on PCR testing to count Covid-19 cases that warrant restrictions? 11. Do you have evidence that Covid-19 virus has been isolated? If yes, please provide the evidence. 12. How many PCR test cycles does Costa Rica use to determine Covid-19 positive cases? Did Costa Rica follow WHO (World Health Organization) or other guidance in determining the cycles used in the PCR test? 13. What, if any, independent analysis and review did Costa Rica conduct of the data provided by WHO (World Health Organization) or other agencies? Does Costa Rica blindly rely on all data from WHO (the World Health Organization) and other sources without further analysis? How does Costa Rica determine the accuracy of the data provided by WHO or other sources? Please provide all independent research, analysis and reviews that Costa Rica has conducted.to verify the accuracy of the data used to justify the declaration of emergency and the restrictions to our rights. 16. Why is covid-19 extraordinary when he says it seems less serious than SARS and less lethal than MERS, why does Dr. Daniel Salas consider Covid-19 an emergency? (…)”. They indicate that the request sent electronically, yielded the automatic response: DM-EE-8000-2020. File No. 2695; however, they claim that to date they have not received any response from the authority or the information they requested. They consider that the action or omission of the respondent authority harms their fundamental rights. The appealed authority must inform whether the e-mail to which the appellants sent the request for information is provided as an official mechanism of communication. The report must be submitted only once, in any of the formats specified below, within THREE BUSINESS DAYS following the notification of this resolution, WITH SUBMISSION OF THE CERTIFIED COPY, DULY IDENTIFIED, FOLIOUS AND IN STRICT CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER OF THE DOCUMENTATION, AS WELL AS ANY TYPE OF ELECTRONIC SUPPORT,

THE ORIGINAL COPIES SHALL ALWAYS BE KEPT IN THE CUSTODY OF THE ADMINISTRATION, the original copies shall always be kept in the custody of the administration, as well as the telephone number where the appealed party may be contacted, under the prevention that, in accordance with the provisions of articles 44, paragraph 2 and 45 of the aforementioned law, it shall be considered to be given under oath, so that any inaccuracy or falsehood shall cause the informants to incur the penalties of perjury or false testimony, according to the nature of the facts contained therein and that the failure to report shall cause the facts to be considered as true and the appeal may be declared admissible, for which purpose it must be submitted in person and not through an attorney-in-fact. The report and the pertinent evidence must be submitted by the appealed authority only once, using only one of the following means: physical documentation submitted directly to the Secretariat of the Chamber; the fax system; electronic documentation through the ONLINE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM; or to the e-mail address Reports- SC@poder-judicial.go.cr, which is an e-mail address exclusively dedicated to the reception of reports. In either case, the report and other documents must expressly indicate the file number to which they are addressed. The report(s) submitted by electronic means must include the signature of the official submitting it, either by digitalizing the physical document containing his signature, or by means of a digital signature, according to the provisions established in the Law on Certificates, Digital Signatures and Electronic Documents, No. 8454, in order to prove the authenticity of the management. It is hereby advised that the documents generated electronically or digitized that are submitted through the Online Management System or by the indicated e-mail, shall not exceed 3 Megabytes. The appellees are warned that they will only be notified of future resolutions if they indicate a fax number if they have one or, failing that, a home or office, within the judicial perimeter of this Chamber, in accordance with the provisions of articles 19 and 34 of the Judicial Notification Law, or, likewise, the appellants may indicate for such purposes an e-mail address or any other technological means that allows the act of communication, as long as they have previously requested the accreditation of such means for their notification to be carried out (Articles 18, 34 and 39 of the aforementioned Law of Judicial Notifications). Be notified. For the processing of this appeal, Judge Fernando Cruz Castro has been appointed as instructor, who is in charge of the corresponding turn.