Venezuelan government: To respond to the new crown, airdrop 1 petro coin to each doctor

On April 3, Venezuela's current President Nicolas Maduro announced a campaign in which the government will airdrop a Petro to every medical worker in the country during the COVID-19 pandemic to thank them for their work in preventing and controlling the coronavirus.

According to an official tweet from the Venezuelan government, the program, called "Doctors of the Fatherland," will be completed using the Venezuelan government's "Patria System," a platform that aims to bypass the country's collapsing banking system and issue bonuses and subsidies using cryptocurrency.

The petro token is purportedly pegged to the price of a barrel of Venezuelan oil, which rebounded yesterday after a sharp drop in March and is currently trading at around $27 a barrel.

Venezuela's health system faces collapse

It is reported that most local hospitals in Venezuela are not adequately equipped to deal with the new coronavirus pandemic. In a report on April 1, soap and disinfectant at the University Hospital of Caracas were considered "luxury goods."

With the hospital already facing shortages of protective equipment, many staff members expected it would quickly become overwhelmed as the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases increased.

Maria Landaeta, the hospital's infectious disease director, said:

"I'm concerned that next week there will be a surge in cases and we won't have the protective equipment supply."

The unstable Petro

Although Maduro’s government claims that each Petro token is worth about $58.93, the token is currently trading at around $20 on trading platforms used by Venezuelans.

Previously, although Maduro and the Venezuelan government were actively promoting the Petro and forcibly integrating the Petro into residents' daily lives, Venezuelan citizens did not seem willing to accept this cryptocurrency because its value was not stable and a large number of merchants chose to abandon using the Petro for transactions.

Will Maduro's choice of airdropping Petro coins help him gain more support? After all, in Maduro's view, for the Venezuelan people, whose monthly minimum wage is equivalent to $3.61 plus $2.89 in food stamps, one Petro coin is equivalent to several months' salary.

Some netizens commented that Maduro might be taking this opportunity to promote his petro. What do you think?

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