Covid-19 roils Latin America as the region faces recession
BRAZIL TORMENTED The South American country has recorded 40k Covid deaths and 800k cases
worrying social crisis is brewing in Latin America where the coronavirus pandemic is spiralling, experts are warning, as fears of a second wave in the US sent shivers through global markets.
More than 1.5 million people have been infected in Central and South America - 70,000 of them are already dead - with no signs of the disease slowing, especially in hard-hit Brazil.
The crisis could provoke the region’s “worst recession in history”, the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) said.
“We’re worried the region could come out of this crisis with more debt, poorer, hungrier and with more unemployment. And most of all, angry,” said ECLAC general secretary Alicia Barcena.
The fracture lines in Brazilian society are already evident. The country’s President, Jair Bolsonaro, has repeatedly downplayed the pandemic’s scale, calling Covid-19 “a flu”.
Brazil on Thursday passed two grim milestones: 40,000 Covid-19 deaths and some 800,000 coronavirus cases. Despite the rising toll
Brazil’s two largest cities - Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro reopened shopping malls, even as the health ministry said there had been more than 1,200 deaths in the last 24 hours and more than 30,000 new cases.
Protesting that stance, campaigners on Thursday dug 100 graves on Copacabana Beach in
Rio de Janeiro, each marked with a black cross, to denounce what they called the “incompetence” of authorities.
n the US, President Donald Trump was leading the charge to continue reopening the economy. The pandemic is not tamed there, with more than 2 million infections and 114,000 deaths. Figures showed a spike in new infections in key states including Texas, California, Arizona and Florida.
In China, Beijing reported two more confirmed cases of Covid-19 in the past 24 hours, taking the tally of new infections to three in less than a week after city authorities lowered the outbreak emergency response to level three.