● Crisis accelerates in Americas,
The coronavirus pandemic is rapidly accelerating in Latin America and the Caribbean, where the numbers of new cases and virusrelated deaths are rising, the director of the World Health Organization’s regional office for the Americas said.
“The situation is going to get worse before it gets better,” Dr. Carissa Etienne, director of the Pan American Health Organization, said Tuesday during a video press briefing.
In the past seven days, the number of infections and deaths from the new coronavirus, which causes the COVID-19 respiratory disease, have more than doubled, Etienne said. As of Tuesday, there were more than 385,000 confirmed cases and more than 11,000 deaths.
This includes six reported cases in Nicaragua, where PAHO is questioning the reporting and said it is concerned about leader Daniel Ortega’s handling of the pandemic. The Nicaraguan government, which has done almost nothing to try to stop the spread of the virus, has said the risks are overrated and encouraged citizens to go about their everyday lives.
“PAHO has been concerned about the response to COVID-19 as seen in Nicaragua,” Etienne said. “We have concerns for the lack of social distancing, the convening of mass gatherings. We have concerns about the testing, contact tracing, the reporting of cases. We also have concerns about what we see as inadequate infection prevention and control.”
Over the past few weeks, PAHO member states have ramped up testing, expanded curfews and even tightened quarantine measures by moving to 24-hour lockdowns, with residents in smaller, island nations only allowed to leave their homes for grocery stores and gas stations on particular days based on their last names. Also, following the lead of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, governments are recommending that citizens cover their faces with cloth in public settings.
Etienne said while it’s difficult to forecast when the peak will happen for the region, the next three to six weeks are expected to be difficult.
“Many of our countries will begin to see an increase in their number of cases and some of our countries will begin to experience an overwhelming of their health systems and we would also see an increased number of cases,” Etienne said. “Of course all of this depends on how well our member states execute their social distancing... and whether we have sufficient [intensive care unit] beds to manage critically ill patients and whether we have something as basic as ventilators and [personal protective equipment].”