Latin America now at ‘epicentre’ of crisis as pandemic worsens
Infections and deaths due to Covid-19 expected to rise amid underfunding and stagnating economies
LATIN America has become the new epicentre of the coronavirus pandemic, with infections and deaths set to substantially worsen in the coming weeks, the World Health Organisation said last night.
The region has confirmed just under 700,000 cases and 33,000 deaths, far less than Europe, but grim reports of cities resorting to mass graves and low testing rates in the majority of countries have led to concerns that these figures are a significant underestimate.
“There can be no doubt our region has become the epicentre of the Covid-19 pandemic,” Dr Carissa Etienne, director of the WHO’S regional office, the Pan American Health Organisation, told a virtual press conference yesterday.
“Now is not the time to relax restrictions or scale back preventive strategies, now is the time to stay strong, to remain vigilant, and to aggressively implement proven public health measures,” she added.
The coronavirus is believed to have first arrived in Latin America in late February and has since taken hold in most of the region.
There have been repeated warnings that the outbreak could be exacerbated by underfunded hospitals and stagnating economies, as Latin American governments have far fewer resources to throw at the virus than many of those in Europe or North America.
However, high rates of underlying diseases, including diabetes and cancer, could also cause a higher death rate from the virus, said Dr Etienne.
“One of the most concerning aspects of the Covid-19 pandemic is the disproportionate impact of the virus on people suffering from non communicable diseases,” she said.
“We have never seen such a deadly relationship between an infectious disease and NCDS. Some of the data is truly alarming, especially for our region where NCDS are pervasive.”
Dr Etienne warned countries to prepare for and introduce measures to prevent further coronavirus infections, but also to ensure that routine health services are not disrupted – a move that could trigger a “parallel pandemic of preventable deaths for those with NCDS”.
Brazil is experiencing South America’s most severe outbreak, with 23,473 reported deaths and close to 375,000 infections – a total second only, globally, to the United States.
These bleak figures are forecast to worsen in the coming weeks. PAHO modelling has predicted that the country will be reporting 1,020 fatalities a day by late June, culminating in a total death toll of 88,300 by Aug 4.
Jair Bolsanaro, the country’s farright president, has repeatedly downplayed the crisis, calling Covid-19 a “little flu”. He has accused state governors leading coronavirus control measures of inciting panic with allegedly excessive stay-at-home recommendations and he has claimed that restrictions will wreck the economy and produce worse hardship than Covid-19.
However, as Brazil’s daily death toll surpassed that of the US yesterday, the White House unexpectedly brought forward a ban on international travellers arriving from Brazil by two days. Moving the ban forward from Thursday was unexplained but Donald Trump’s administration had previously said the ban was planned because of the severity of the outbreak in Brazil.
The restrictions do not apply to US citizens or legal permanent residents, but any foreign national who has been to Brazil in the two weeks before arriving in the US will be denied entry.
The PAHO yesterday refused to be drawn into a discussion about whether nations within Latin America should also close their borders to Brazil, stressing that it did not make recommendations about trade and travel restrictions.
The agency did, however, point out that Brazil does not have the highest incidence rate in the region. That undesirable title goes to Peru, which has reported almost 124,000 cases and 3,600 deaths, a higher per-capita rate than Brazil. Meanwhile, the president of neighbouring Chile has admitted that the healthcare system there is under strain and “very close to the limit”. In Santiago, the capital, protests have erupted due to food shortages caused by the strict lockdown.
Yesterday, people in Ecuador protested against their government’s response to the virus. Last month, authorities in Guayaquil, its second largest city, were so overwhelmed that hundreds of bodies remained unburied. Meanwhile at least 150,000 jobs have been lost due to Covid-19.
Venezuela is once again teetering on the edge of an emergency, according to a report published yesterday by Human Rights Watch and Johns Hopkins University in the US.
It said that the country’s economic, political and health crisis has left it chronically underprepared to tackle a pandemic.
Close to 65 per cent of healthcare workers said access to clean water was inconsistent, while 13 of 16 hospitals surveyed in Caracas, the capital city, said they were reusing face masks and seven reported shortages of gloves.
“The humanitarian crisis in Venezuela and the breakdown of the health system have created dangerous conditions conducive to rapid community spread, unsafe working conditions for health personnel, and a high mortality rate among patients in need of hospital treatment,” said Dr Kathleen Page, of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
‘Now is not the time to relax restrictions or scale back strategies, now is the time to stay strong, to remain vigilant, and have proven public health measures’