Two years of a pandemic that hits Latin America

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.

Workers at the Campo de Esperanza cemetery bury a victim of COVID-19 in Brasilia, Brazil. EFE / Joedson Alves

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.

A nurse prepares a dose of the covid-19 vaccine in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. EFE/André Coelho

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.

Despite Beijing's Baby Boosterism, China's Population Growth Hits New Low

WASHINGTON — 

For the past 10 years, China’s domestic policy changes have carried a growing sense of demographic urgency. A strictly enforced one-child mandate changed to a two-kids-in-some-cases option (2013), which morphed into two children for all (2016), which rolled over to the current government push for three offspring (2021).

But where are the babies? Why aren’t playgrounds as jammed as Beijing’s notorious 3rd Ring Road? The workers of tomorrow are nowhere to be found.

Despite the government’s best efforts, the data released last week by China’s National Bureau of Statistics show that in 2021 in a nation of 1.4 billion people, there was a net population growth of only 480,000 people — against 10.1 million deaths and 10.6 million births — suggesting a disconnect between China’s policy goals and its people.

FILE – Families with young children pose for photos in Beijing, Feb. 13, 2021.Struggling with an aging population and declining birth rates, China is trying to shift its population policies to avert a demographic crisis.

“Working overtime night and day and facing the ridiculous cost of goods … who wants your children to grow up in such an environment?” said a poster on Weibo, China’s microblogging platform.

“You can’t have both mortgage and formula,” another joked.

A third quipped, “Let’s guess … will this year’s Spring Festival gala be promoting the three kid policies?” The Spring Festival Gala, a TV production from the state-owned China Media Group, was recognized by the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s most watched TV program since 1983. And, according to state-controlled CCTV, it is an annual must-watch New Year’s Eve extravaganza of dancing, singing and comedy.

China’s birthrate has declined swiftly over the past five years, from 12.4 births for every 1,000 citizens in 2017 to 7.52 births for every 1,000 citizens in 2021, the lowest in nearly 60 years, according to statistics bureau records. The time span is significant because the Great Chinese Famine began in 1959 and ended in 1961, three years before China conducted its benchmark second census. “Some 30 million Chinese starved to death, and about the same number of births were lost or delayed,” according to an article about the famine in the National Institutes of Health archive.

Yi Fuxian, a senior scientist in obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of Big Country With an Empty Nest, told VOA Mandarin that “as China’s economic miracle has been heavily based on its inexhaustible labor force, an inflection point in its population will inevitably mean an inflection point in its economic model.”

n this June 1, 2017 photo, women walk with children wearing matching hats as they cross a bridge at a public park on International Children’s Day in Beijing.

Has population already peaked?

Although scholars have already referred to China’s demographic crisis as a ticking time bomb, China’s population may have peaked much earlier than projected given a rapidly aging population coupled with the rapidly declining birth rate, Yi said.

China’s National Population Development Plan (2016-2030) estimated that the fertility rate between 2020 and 2030 would hover around 1.8 babies per woman of childbearing age, and that the country would start to experience negative population growth in 2031. According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, a public policy think tank, a nation needs a fertility rate of 2.1 to maintain a stable population.

China’s true fertility rate may be lower than the official estimate, Yi said. “We will start to see the population decline in 2022, nine years earlier than expected,” he added.

Mark Williams, chief Asia economist at Capital Economics, wrote last week on his company’s website that “the most likely scenario is that slowing productivity growth and a shrinking workforce prevent China ever passing the U.S.”

China’s seventh census, released in 2020, found that there were 880 million between the ages of 16 and 59 in the workforce, a sharp drop of more than 40 million compared with 2010 figures. You Jun, vice minister of China’s Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, said in March that China’s labor force would continue to decline, shrinking by as many as 35 million people in the next five years. In about 25 years, one-third of China’s population will be retirees, according to the 2020 census report by China’s National Bureau of Statistics.

Global issue

China is not alone in facing this issue. A study published in October 2020 in The Lancet, a medical journal, warns of the “jaw-dropping” economic, social and geopolitical effects on nearly every country as fertility rates fall and populations shrink. “Our findings suggest that continued trends in female educational attainment and access to contraception will hasten declines in fertility and slow population growth,” said the authors of the study.

Thomas Duesterberg, a senior fellow who specializes in economics at the Hudson Institute, said population growth is one of the most important sources of economic growth because as the workforce declines, so does the rate of innovation.

“The innovativeness and ingenuity of human beings is reduced because a large part of the creativity of people comes in the first part of their career,” he told VOA Mandarin. “So, if you have an aging population and a declining population, you’re likely to see less of that ability to innovate, which is another key element of growth going forward.”

Ning Jizhe, head of China’s National Bureau of Statistics, acknowledged after the release of the 2020 census that “the country’s economic structure and technological development need to be adjusted and adapted” as the country’s population structure changes.

Bill Conerly, an economist and the author of The Flexible Stance: Thriving in a Boom/Bust Economy, said the declining birth rate would not have an immediate impact on China’s economy.

“A baby is a net drain on the economy for 15, 25 years and sometimes even longer. So I don’t put a lot of importance in this,” he told VOA Mandarin.

But in the long term, the declining birth rate will eventually affect the labor market. “Actually, the birth rate has been coming down for quite some time,” he said. “So maybe China’s only 10 years away from having a very tight labor market. It will eventually come.”