Caracas, March 15 (RHC) The president of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, declared this Sunday a social and collective quarantine in the states of La Guaira, Miranda, Cojedes, Zulia, Apure, Táchira and the Capital District to contain the spread of the coronavirus in the Latin American country.

According to the information, the measure will take effect from 5:00 am on March 16.

"This isn't a collective vacation, it's a quarantine that deserves great social discipline, great self-control, and great psychological, moral and spiritual support among the family to protect our [adults]," the president said.

"We should not leave the house except to cover indispensable needs," the president reiterated, adding that all the support of the Peace Quadrants will be deployed "to make this circumstance that we are going to experience less difficult, which will be complicated.

In this context, Maduro said that quarantine is "the only way" to deal with the coronavirus. "There is no other option. Either we go to quarantine or the pandemic could bring down Venezuela badly and tragically, as is happening today in Europe," he stressed.

The leader of the Bolivarian nation emphasized that "the pandemic has no ideological, political or social distinctions," and called for leaving "differences aside" and uniting "in a single national effort [...] to face these new circumstances that life obliges us and that life presents to us.

Reportedly, as of Sunday, Venezuelan health authorities were reporting 17 active cases of coronavirus.