Analysis: South America’s pandemic woes rooted in underdevelopment, culture, poor vaccine logistics

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – While the first world is pulling off its masks, the South America region is unable to find an effective way to advance in the fight against the virus. With the worst case mortality rates in the world, several factors are conspiring to cause this tragedy.

From Budapest to Seville, through London, Copenhagen, Rome and Munich, in the midst of the pandemic, soccer stands are full of people without masks, drinking beer and hugging each other to celebrate goals, as if the Covid-19 catastrophe were only a bad memory.

The European Championship, the Old Continent’s national soccer tournament, seems to be located on a different planet than the Copa America.

In Brazil’s stadiums (which could have been those of Peru, Colombia or Argentina), no one is drinking beer or shouting goals in the stands – because there is literally no one there. Only the empty stadiums accompany soccer players, while the region holds the world record for the number of deaths caused by the coronavirus.

In fact, by June 27, South America led the ranking of deaths per capita in a week, with 55.8 per million inhabitants. It was followed by North America, far behind with only 7.9. The European Union, where people fill soccer stadiums but also public spaces and even theaters, registered the rate of 5.4, according to Our World in Data website.

“As the United States and Europe begin to emerge from the pandemic, take off their masks and reflect on how best to spend recovery funds, the crisis is unfolding in much of South America,” the British newspaper The Guardian published a few days ago.

In a report entitled “The Silent Execution,” the media reflects how Covid-19, a year and a half after the start of the pandemic, has found in this region the most vulnerable place on the planet.

Among the 10 countries with the highest number of deaths per million in the week of June 27th, 6 are South American: Paraguay (1st), Colombia (3rd), Suriname (5th), Argentina (6th), Uruguay (8th) and Brazil (10th). And another 3 nations from the region are in the top 20: Peru (14th), Chile (15th) and Bolivia (16th).

The figures show that South America is still trapped in the pandemic, despite advances in vaccination and the experience of almost 500 days of living with the virus. And it could be worse, given the dubious statistics reported by countries such as Venezuela, Mexico, Nicaragua and others in the Caribbean. This lack of transparency “saves” them from standing higher (worse) in the world rankings.

What has turned Latin America, and especially South America, into the global epicenter of the coronavirus? Most analyses agree on a multi-causality originating in the region’s social, cultural, economic and political particularities.

In other words, a series of factors that individually do not explain the phenomenon. As the director of the Brazilian Society of Infectious Diseases José David Urbaez said, “the pandemic was never controlled in Latin America.”

First, there is a cultural factor that in the context of the pandemic should be less visible. The lack of respect for the rules: traffic, education, democratic life. And sanitary rules, such as wearing a mask or refraining from family celebrations.

The news have shown how thousands of citizens have ignored government regulations… and even the very officials who are supposed to enforce them, as in the “vaccinegate” that shook Argentina, Chile and Peru.

This is coupled with the poor health infrastructure. “Our region has insufficient and very precarious health care structures, which contributes to the high lethality rates due to lack of access to centers that attend the most serious patients”, Urbaez said.

In the region there is an average of 9.1 ICU beds per 100,000 inhabitants, below OECD countries which have 12, according to the “Covid Panorama” published by the organization in late 2020. The United States, the world leader, has an index of 34.7 and Germany, 29.2.

On the vaccination front, South America once again lags behind, with the exception of Chile and Uruguay. By June 22, with infections and deaths marking the map in red, only 22% of the subcontinent’s population had been administered at least one dose, compared to 41% in North America and 38% in Europe (Our World in Data figures).

According to Rodrigo Arce Cardozo, a Bolivian epidemiologist at New York University, “Latin American countries have a greater urban concentration in specific areas. In the case of Argentina, the Buenos Aires metropolitan region; in Bolivia, the La Paz – Santa Cruz hubs, where the bulk of the population is located. In Chile, it is Santiago; in Peru, it is Lima.”

“This has meant that the efforts of the pandemic have been concentrated there and created great inequalities in other regions in those countries. Obviously, transmissibility increases in densely populated areas, but the problem is that it is also transmitted in the provinces and rural areas, because the virus does not choose.”

In addition to the precarious vaccine logistics, there is social resistance due to prejudice and misinformation. There is the tragic case of a Colombian couple who did not believe in the virus or in vaccination: both died of Covid in an ICU in Bogotá within days of each other in June, as published in Semana magazine.

To this fatal cocktail the economic factor must be added. Briefly, chronic underdevelopment affects these countries, with very high poverty rates, alarming labor informality and rising unemployment. This structural problem, when the health situation calls for home confinement, forces millions to go out to earn their daily bread at the risk of becoming infected and spreading Covid-19.

“It should be noted that the pandemic is controlled with severe mobility restrictions for long periods, which implies the closure of business activities and, of course, a financial support program so that people can stay at home. In our region these actions were grossly inadequate,” Urbaez said.

This is where the last factor of this fatal combination comes in: politics. Governments have managed the pandemic with many blunders; at times they have exaggerated restrictions, as in Argentina, and at others they have appealed to denialism, as in Brazil.

But they are all linked by a common aspect: the lack of national consensus to solve the conflicts caused by the health crisis. “When there are political disputes, or an election in between, obviously the solution becomes less coordinated and ultimately worse,” Arce Cardozo explained.

For the Bolivian epidemiologist, there are also “inequalities in access to elements that have become a priority in this pandemic, from hospital supplies to vaccines.” This means that “the region is much less capable than other countries which have made an earlier commitment to purchase or close contracts with pharmaceutical companies producing these vaccines.”

With few doses and intensive care beds, with many people on the streets to secure the sustenance that the State does not guarantee them, with economies in crisis and governments ranging from hesitant to indifferent, South America is trapped in the maze of the pandemic.

Meanwhile, new variants of Covid-19, such as the Delta, are preparing to enter the region while threatening the First World, where people today optimistically embrace in the stands of   stadiums.

Source: Infobae