What happens in August could be key in Latin America’s coronavirus fight, expert says

Her husband made headlines when he announced on July 7 that he had tested positive to Covid-19. And on Thursday, Michelle Bolsonaro, wife of Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, also tested positive for the virus.

Across Latin America, skyrocketing new infection numbers are reaching even the highest circles, a sign of how pervasive the coronavirus has become — and how ineffective many government efforts have been to stop it so far.

At least six top government officials have tested positive for the coronavirus in Brazil so far, the country with the second-highest number of confirmed cases and deaths globally after the United States. But it is hardly the only country in the region that has been devastated by the pandemic:

Over a dozen officials, including the interim president, have tested positive for the coronavirus in Bolivia, which broke its own record for new coronavirus infections in a single day last week. Peru, Argentina and Colombia are trying to catch up to surging case numbers with new quarantine orders. And on Friday, Mexico overtook the United Kingdom to become the country with the third-highest number of Covid-19 fatalities globally, according to Johns Hopkins University data.

In Mexico City, Dr. Carlos Martínez Murillo, an emergency room doctor who works in the Covid-19 ward at the capital’s General Hospital, reflected on his new reality for the last five months, a reality that has already taken the life of nearly 600 health professionals in the country.

“I haven’t contracted the disease but have colleagues who have. As the weeks and months have gone by, we have learned to manage our stress. I’m not saying that the fear is gone. The fear remains, but we have channeled it [with our work],” Dr. Martínez said.

Colombia reported a new record of daily coronavirus cases after 10,673 new infections were recorded on Saturday, bringing the total to 306,181, its health ministry said. And even though some cities with low rates of infection will be allowed to partially reopen, President Iván Duque had already extended Tuesday his government’s quarantine measures until August 30th.

Calling Buenos Aires province, where the country’s capital is located, “the epicenter of the problem,” Argentina’s President Alberto Fernández announced Friday the current quarantine will be extended until at least August 16th, “keeping everything the way it is today”, because “the virus is circulating even more”. When it comes to testing, positivity rate increased from 22.4% to 26.2% in the last tw weeks.

Carlos Lozada, Peru’s Minister of Housing, Construction and Sanitation told TV Peru Friday that the Council of Ministers had decided to extend the country’s state of emergency for another month, until August 31st. Lozada said the decision was made after authorities reported rising cases in at least four regions including Cusco, where Machu Picchu, Peru’s greatest tourist attraction, is located.

The world’s most-affected region

Latin America is, without a doubt, “the world’s most affected region” by the pandemic, Dr. Marcos Espinal, Director of the Department of Communicable Diseases at the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), told CNN in a recent interview.

“We are in a very critical situation. Brazil reported Wednesday more than 40,000 new cases, Colombia more than 10,000 and Mexico more than 7,000. The next few weeks are going to be of high importance in terms of finding out how can we flatten the curve,” Dr. Espinal said.

He added that some countries that had some success at the beginning like Chile, now have to redouble efforts due to exacerbating factors in the pandemic like work conditions, mobility and highly vulnerable populations.

“We have to remember that there’s great inequality in Latin American and the Caribbean. There’s an enormous informal economy and it is more difficult to observe social distancing rules. A series of social, economic and public health challenges make fighting the disease more difficult [in Latin America], and therefore, controlling the pandemic is going to take more time,” Espinal said.

In a televised message on Friday, Argentina President Alberto Fernández observed a troubling trend in his country that has also been observed in other Latin American nations: “In the month of May, we recorded 375 [Covid-19-related] deaths. In June, the number of people who died was 700. Twenty-four days later it rose to 1,500. And in the subsequent 24 days it reached 3,000. That means that the number of deaths has doubled every 24 days,” the President said.

The knock-on effects of the pandemic are certain to take their own toll, as well, warned a report published last week by the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, and the World Health Organization, which warned that “the pandemic has become an unprecedented economic and social crisis and, if urgent measures are not taken, it could transform into a food, humanitarian, and political crisis.”

Measures to contain the pandemic, including social distancing, will result in a 9% decline in the region’s gross domestic product and an unemployment rise to 14%, it said.

And healthcare systems, stretched to their limits by the rising numbers of infections, have had to interrupt their efforts to contain noncommunicable and chronic diseases, which “las led to a significant increase in overall mortality, additional to the deaths caused by Covid-19,” the report added adds.

Across the region, lines out the door have been seen at hospitals, and lack of resources and manpower have been a widespread concern for doctors. In the Dominican Republic, where authorities insist the health system hasn’t collapsed, some people must nevertheless wait for days to be treated for the coronavirus.

CNN found 71-year-old Eloísa Mieses at the Marcelino Vélez Santana Regional General Hospital in Santo Domingo, the Dominican Republic’s capital. She had to wait three days before being admitted for Covid-19 treatment.

“I used to hear people around my neighborhood who said that it [the disease] didn’t exist, that they hadn’t heard that something like that was real,” Mieses said.

“But now, all the people are seeing that it’s real.”