A 61-year-old Brazilian who had been in Italy presented symptoms and was admitted to a center in Sao Paulo, where the coronavirus was confirmed. It was the first official case of the pandemic in Latin America.
The arrival of the disease in Latin America, after several continental cases before in the US and Canada, was one of the reasons that led the World Health Organization (WHO) to declare the pandemic just 15 days later, March 11th.
“We must learn the great lessons of the pandemic. International cooperation mechanisms in the health area were not effective. Even today we perceive that, with more than ten billion vaccines distributed in the world, less than 11% of them went to poor countries », he explains to Efe Dimas Tadeu Covas, president of the Butantan Institute in Sao Paulo (Brazil)a pioneer biomedical research center for the manufacture of vaccines and research on covid-19 at the Latin American level.
Latin America was not prepared for a pandemic
As cases and deaths increased, it became clear that the region was not prepared for the impact of this disease.
The health crisis also generated social demonstrations that caused very strong political convulsions, especially in some countries.
On Paraguaythe lack of supplies and the discomfort with the government’s management were the trigger for intense protests that forced President Mario Abdo Benítez to make changes to his cabinet in March 2021.
For two weeks, the streets of the main Paraguayan cities were occupied by citizens expressing their anger at the collapse of a health system affected by low investment and corruption.
Negligence is also in the sights of many sectors when taking stock of the regional fight against the pandemic. The Government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador is accused of this in Mexico and more specifically the person in charge of the fight against the disease, Hugo López-Gatell, who is blamed for Mexico being the fifth country with the most deaths in the world, with more than 316,000 deaths to date.
Criticism also points to López Obrador himself, who has tested positive for coronavirus twice and who is criticized for sometimes lowering the severity of the impact of the pandemic.
Regarding the economy, 2020, the first year of covid-19, was especially hard for Latin America, with a 7.7% contraction in regional GDP, according to data from the Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLAC), while that in 2021 there was a certain recovery, of 3.7%.
By 2022, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) expects the region to grow just 2.4%.
Testimonies of a drama
The two years that have passed since the first infection in Latin America, with a balance to date of 146 million cases and 2.6 million deaths, have left many testimonies of pain.
And if there is a group that can relate this drama in the first person, it is that of health professionals, who have experienced the problem on a daily basis.
The health institutions “were not prepared, this surpassed them”, comments to Efe the Mexican nurse Margarita Reyeswho lost his father, José Margarito, 75, and his brother, 46, to the coronavirus.
“From the first moment I had to be in the emergency room, where they did not know how to handle the patients, who increased day by day,” he says, recounting how the intensive care units were filling up with patients as SARS spread. -CoV-2.
The testimony of this nurse contradicts the statements of the Mexican Government, which ensures that “no one was left without a bed.”
On Venezuelaa country with a serious economic crisis that especially affects the health sector, Estefania Polanco saw how her mother almost died due to lack of care, after being admitted to a hospital in the state of Miranda, in the center of the country.
«He was admitted on July 10, 2021, he was unconscious for four days with no hope of getting out of there. My father-in-law managed to get in to see it. They didn’t attend to her. They only changed her oxygen and gave her a few medications », this young woman, who finally had to hire personalized attention to attend to her mother, tells Efe.
The images are a faithful record of the calamities experienced, scenes between drama and horror, such as those experienced in Guayaquil (Ecuador), where at the beginning of the pandemic the corpses came to crowd the streets and houses due to the collapse of the health network and funeral services.
The education of children, the other side of the coin
The pandemic also dealt a heavy blow to the educational system of most Latin American countries, due to the closure of educational centers decreed by the authorities.
According to ECLAC, 167 million students have been affected by the stoppage of classes since March 2020.
Meanwhile, UNESCO estimates that the impact of school dropout has meant that 3.1 million children and young people have been permanently left out of the education system.
This is the case, for example, of Argentinawhere the majority of students will return to face-to-face classes this year, but tens of thousands of students, especially those belonging to the most vulnerable sectors, “disconnected” from the education system and have not returned.
“Clearly we are not going to recover all the boys, many do not want to return to a school that did not take care of them enough,” he explains to Efe Claudia Romero, Doctor of Education and researcher at the Torcuato di Tella University.
And in other places they have not yet started the return to classes, as is the case of Peruthe country with the highest mortality rate in the world, with more than 209,000 deaths (634 people per 100,000 inhabitants) where they have established the next month of March as the limit for returning to class.
vaccination
Mass immunization against the coronavirus began in Latin America in December 2020 and represented a turning point in terms of the growth of infections and deaths, although the process was not without setbacks and setbacks that put it to the test, such as the arrival of the omicron variant.
In this regard, the case of Chileone of the countries with the highest vaccination rate in the world -higher than 93% of adults-, but where the positivity rate once again exceeded the 35% barrier in these southern summer months.
This situation has challenged the capacity of hospitals and has increased mortality, despite measures such as the mandatory use of masks outside or PCR tests at airports.
On boliviathe plan that began with health personnel and was gradually extended to the rest of the adult population today even reaches those over five years of age, through the administration of vaccines such as Sputnik-V, Sinopharm, AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Moderna and Janssen .
For its part, Peru has taken advantage of the fact that it has a well-organized vaccination system to achieve progress that has made it possible to reduce the spread of the omicron variant at the beginning of this year.
In Central America, Panama and Costa Rica They have stood out for their high rates of diagnosis and vaccination, since both countries have more than 80% of the population with at least one dose of vaccine and more than 73% with two doses.
By contrast, Honduras and Guatemala have been left behind in the immunization process, especially in the latter country, where only 30% of the population has received two doses.
But perhaps the most paradoxical situation in the fight against the pandemic is that of Brazilwith a president like Jair Bolsonaro who defends postulates that border on denialism.
“Brazil was always recognized as an important country in the international health movement and, suddenly, it went on to declare itself against the measures of science, of the control of the pandemic, advances that were already considered consolidated,” comments the Professor Covas, from Butantan Institute.
But despite Bolsonaro’s ideas, the measures adopted by the state governments have made it possible for the country to be one of those with one of the highest immunization rates in the world, with more than 73% of its population following the guideline. complete, while 23% have already received the booster.
Haiti in the spotlight
With only 0.9% of the population with the complete vaccination schedule, Haitithe poorest country in the Americas, is a matter of concern for health authorities.
“The countries that are in the same situation as Haiti, such as many Africans, are presenting high numbers of transmission of the disease and are potentially generators of new variants. As long as we do not have a global action to attend to them, we are going to be exposed to these variants”, warns the president of the Butantan Institute.
If the matter is not taken action, this disturbing scenario could spread to other corners of a continent where the situation is not fully controlled, not even in the United States, the most powerful country in the world and the most affected by the pandemic, with more than 78 million cases, about 950,000 deaths and with only 64.7% of the population with the complete vaccination schedule, although the average number of infections is decreasing weekly.
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