At the beginning of March, when Latin America was confirming its first cases of COVID-19, we started taking precautions to protect our employees in Peru. Though it wasn’t required for companies in the country at the time, Hudbay conducted temperature checks, provided masks, and discouraged close contact, such as handshakes. Starting in April, ‘quick tests’ (antibody tests) were procured and administered to incoming and outbound workers at Constancia.
The Peruvian government declared a state of emergency on March 15, 2020, requiring non-essential businesses to be shut down, initially for a 15-day period. On February 19, 2021, the Government of Peru extended the COVID-19 health emergency for another 180 days, from March 7 to September 2, 2021.
On March 19th, 2020, we initiated a temporary and orderly suspension of our Constancia mine. During the suspension period, a smaller workforce was maintained at the site to oversee critical aspects of the operation in order to facilitate a quick and efficient restart and ramp-up of the mine. Hudbay received recognition and approval from Peru's Ministry of Energy and Mines in May 2020 for its restart protocols and Constancia successfully ramped-up to normal levels by July 2020. Enhanced health and safety measures were implemented upon the re-start of operations and remain in place as Hudbay continues to monitor the local impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Throughout the rapidly changing environment, our focus remains on the health and safety of our workforce and the local communities. We are working collaboratively with the health authorities to ensure our workforce and partners adhere to COVID-19 protocols while continuing to operate safely and efficiently. To protect our workforce, beyond screening for symptoms of COVID-19, we continue to test incoming and outbound workers at testing facilities in Cusco and Arequipa, supervised by the health authorities. This testing has helped protect our workforce and local communities by identifying potentially infected individuals prior to their travel to Constancia or back to their communities.
Our overall approach for protecting workers and communities is establishing a first line of defence of quarantining and testing inbound and outbound workers, and a second line of defence of distancing and protection processes at our Constancia camp and operation. Hudbay has implemented procedures for quarantining incoming workers in hotels in Cusco and Arequipa before they travel to site; and testing incoming and outbound workers. During work rotations we also conduct additional screening protocols; have introduced extensive sanitary protocols; enforce workplace physical distancing protocols, and have made adjustments to work rotation schedules.
As part of our effort to ensure effective protective measures in September 2020 Constancia became the first mine in Peru to obtain the SAFEGUARD Certification from Bureau Veritas. This biosafety certification confirms that Constancia fully complies with all the protocols of its COVID-19 surveillance plan. Bureau Veritas reached this conclusion after an exhaustive audit of the mine's policies and procedures.