Latin America’s painful, damaging virus outbreak

Over the last few weeks, the focus of global media coverage of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has shifted distinctly westwards from Europe. Having focused on the Old Continent for nearly three months while the pandemic was running wild there, attention is now largely on the way the virus has taken hold of the Americas, notably Central and South America, besides the US.

The biggest challenge for the region has been very weak and indecisive political leadership. Some of the biggest countries in Latin America, including Brazil and Mexico, failed to impose strict lockdowns to curb the virus’s spread. As a result, both nations are bearing the brunt of the pandemic’s impact. Much like US President Donald Trump, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has consistently downplayed the threat of the virus and has even been ordered by the courts to wear a mask in public or face a fine. With the president himself taking the virus so lightly, it is no wonder that Brazil has been ravaged by it, with more than 59,000 deaths so far. Bolsonaro is clearly struggling to deal with the virus. He has already seen two health ministers quit in quick succession due to sharp disagreements over his policies. For instance, the president said in May that gyms and beauty parlors could reopen, even while the death count continued to scale new heights every day.

But not all the continent’s leaders have behaved as irresponsibly as Bolsonaro.

Some did take a very prudent and cautious approach by imposing strict lockdowns early on. However, even these countries, like Peru and Argentina, have seen an explosion in the number of victims in a pattern very similar to Europe.

But, as in Europe, consistency in policies and strict measures on the ground are paying off in some Latin American nations, notably Argentina and Uruguay, where experts believe the virus is under control and the worst may already be over.

For the rest of the region, the situation remains alarming. As in practically every country in the world, the pandemic has overwhelmed health care systems, with Ecuador being among the earliest to see a collapse in the face of a sharp rise in the numbers of patients. The situation is perhaps even worse in two of the largest countries, Brazil and Mexico, where most provinces face a severe shortage of hospital beds and qualified medical professionals.

Indeed, the high mortality rates in several parts of the region are due to poor health care, and fatalities caused by the virus are set to jump. Large sections of the populations of both Brazil and Mexico lack access to sanitation, tap water and basic health care.

Another factor that is bound to hit the poor across the region is the dramatic collapse of the economy, with most experts predicting a decline of more than 9 percent in Latin America’s gross domestic product — the sharpest ever contraction for most nations in the region. The economic costs of the pandemic seem to be much higher here than in most other parts of the world.

Wracked with sharp domestic political differences and divided societies, much of Latin America will struggle to overcome the devastation caused by COVID-19 and the region could take much longer to recover than the rest of the world.