Canadian exploration company Aurania Resources has extracted its personnel from the field in Ecuador in response to the outbreak of Covid-19, which has already infected more than 150 people in that country and killed two.

The Ecuador government has moved to limit the spread of coronavirus infections by adopting policies such as self-isolation and aggressive limitation on movement of people.

On March 15, the country imposed an international travel ban, and on Monday night all flights, maritime and road traffic into the country were ban. By Tuesday, a local travel ban also came into effect.

Aurania said it had withdrawn its personnel from the Cordillera de Cutucu and that they all had returned to their homes.

“Our geologists will spend the next few weeks working through a backlog of geological information from the field.  They will focus on the interpretation of this information and the refinement of exploration targets for gold/silver and copper/silver. We will be poring through seismic and well log data from Ecuador and Peru over the next few weeks to refine our sedimentary-hosted copper/silver targeting in both countries.”

Fellow Canadian explorers Adventus Mining and Salazar Resources have also suspended site activities at their Curipamba, Pijili and Santiago projects. Salazar has also suspended site activities at its other 100%-owned projects in Ecuador.

The partners said that the suspension timing might inhibit the full implementation of the planned baseline field programmes during the current rainy season at the Curipamba project, which could result in an at least six-month delay to the original environmental and social impact assessment development timeline.

The feasibility study earn-in requirement of October 5, 2021 on the El Domo deposit within the Curipamba project would be delayed by the number of days that site activities were shut down starting from March 17.

If necessary, Adventus and Salazar said they could self-fund an extended care-and-maintenance scenario on the projects well into 2021.

“Our team together with our partner Salazar have worked hard to recently start three drill rigs at our Curipamba project and completed the groundwork to start exploration drilling at our Pijili and Santiago projects in the second quarter of 2020, but our excitement must now be balanced with patience as we tackle this greater public health challenge together. The economics of our El Domo deposit and exploration potential within Curipamba remain robust at spot pricing due to the high copper grades and significant gold credits,” said Adventus CEO Christian Kargl-Simard.

Salazar CEO Fredy Salazar commented that it was hoped that by acting quickly, the government would be able to shorten the time to lift the travel restrictions and allow economic activity to resume in the country.