Virus-lax Brazil worries neighbours
BUENOS AIRES — Brazil’s virtually uncontrolled surge of COVID-19 cases is spawning fear that construction workers, truck drivers and tourists from Latin America’s biggest nation will spread the disease to neighbouring countries that are doing a better job of controlling the coronavirus.
Brazil, a continent-sized country that shares borders with nearly every other nation in South America, has reported more than 70,000 cases and more than 5,000 deaths, according to government figures and a tally by Johns Hopkins University — far more than any of its neighbours. The true number of deaths and infections is believed to be much higher because of limited testing.
The country’s borders remain open, there are virtually no quarantines or curfews and President Jair Bolsonaro continues to scoff at the seriousness of the disease.
The country of 211 million people surpassed China — where the virus began — in the official number of COVID-19 deaths this week, prompting Bolsonaro to say: “So what?”
“I am sorry,” the far-right president told journalists. “What do you want me to do?”
In Paraguay, soldiers enforcing anti-virus measures have dug a shallow trench alongside the first 250 metres of the main road entering the city of Pedro Juan Caballero from the neighbouring Brazilian city of Punta Pora, to prevent people from walking along the road from Brazil and disappearing into the surrounding city.
Paraguay has fewer than 250 confirmed coronavirus cases and its borders have been closed since March 24, with enforcement particularly focused on the largely open frontier with Brazil.
Argentine officials say they are particularly worried about truck traffic from Brazil. In provinces bordering Brazil, Argentina is setting up secure corridors where Brazilian drivers can access bathrooms, get food and unload products without ever coming into contact with Argentines.
“Brazil worries me a lot,” Argentine President Alberto Fernandez told local news outlets Saturday. “A lot of traffic is coming from Sao Paulo, where the infection rate is extremely high, and it doesn’t appear to me that the Brazilian government is taking it with the seriousness that it requires. That worries me a lot, for the Brazilian people and also because it can be carried to Argentina.”
One of eight known cases in the Argentine state of Misiones is that of a 61-year-old truck driver who apparently caught the disease in Sao Paulo and then returned to Argentina, where he died after infecting his wife. Argentina has about 4,000 cases and more than 200 dead, according to the Johns Hopkins tally.
Even socialist Venezuela, where the health system has been in a yearslong state of collapse, has said it’s worried about neighbouring Brazil.
“I’ve ordered the reinforcement of the frontier with Brazil to guarantee an epidemiological and military barrier,” President Nicolas Maduro said on state television last week.