The Jigsaw Puzzle of South America’s COVID Response
Jay Ramesh
Paraguayans tore a page out of America’s textbook on Friday, March 5, as protestors battled with police just outside the senate building in Asuncion. However, unlike in America, the protests were a result of months of frustration at the nation’s failed handling of the coronavirus pandemic Earlier that day, Paraguay’s health minister resigned, and President Mario Abdo Benitez has asked his entire cabinet to resign in response to the protests as cases soar to record levels.
But what’s going on in the rest of South America? Let’s take a look at a few individual countries.
Brazil: As one of the nations with arguably the worst handling of the Covid pandemic, Brazil’s hospitals are on the verge of collapse. Even though the country of ~211 million has a number equivalent to roughly a third (11,000,000 cases at the time of this writing) of America’s cases, it has around half of the number of deaths (264,000). President Jair Bolsonaro told Brazillians to “stop fussing and whining” as a new, more infectious strain of Covid is ravaging the country. The country serves as a model to the world of how to not handle the pandemic, as well as a potential powder keg for an explosion of the new Covid variant.
Paraguay: The small nation of ~7,000,000 is also facing an imminent collapse of healthcare infrastructure, with nearly all public hospitals at full capacity. Less than 0.1% of the country has been vaccinated at the time of this writing, and the government has admitted that it has a severe shortage of drugs essential for treating Covid patients. Protests raged in Asuncion over widespread shortages of medicine and government failures to handle the pandemic, with rioters breaking down police barriers and road barricades.
Chile: Chile has become Latin America’s and arguably the world’s shining success story, vaccinating 16% of its entire population in just 21 days. With an open economy, a strong and efficient healthcare system, foreign trade connections, and a crafty businessman in President Sebastián Piñero, the country was able to hold local clinical trials and bargain for large shipments of Chinese, American, and new British vaccines. The country is on pace to develop nation-wide herd immunity by June of 2021, after only starting the vaccination process on February 3.
Colombia: The country has announced that its land and sea borders will remain closed until June 1, 2021 to contain Covid cases, however parts of the Venezuelan border will remain open for the flow of refugees into Colombia. The country has vaccinated more people than it has active cases, and cases have fallen to an all-time low, with ICU occupancy falling off throughout the country’s urban areas. As vaccines continue to flow into the country, Colombia appears to be winning the fight against covid.
Despite successes and failures across different countries, the pandemic has harshened an already difficult economic reality for millions throughout South America, and Latin America as a whole. Much of the region was in the process of a slow recovery from financial crises, but the pandemic caused GDP in Latin America to contract by 8.1% in 2020, down from pre-pandemic projected growth of 1.8%, the worst regional contraction in the world. Social tensions have also flared in hotspots across the region, as Argentinians faced the longest lockdown in the world (Mar 20 - Nov 8 2020) and Peru has suffered one of the highest per capita deaths in the world. In many places such as Brazil, domestic abuse against women has skyrocketed, with many cases going unreported.
Economic recovery across Latin America will largely depend on the distribution of vaccines. However, there are some positive outlooks for South America. In Colombia, Canada has announced $29.5 million in development assistance for education, peace, and infrastructure-based projects. Many countries are finally receiving vaccine shipments from Russia, China, Europe, and the US. Covid has proved a near-impossible puzzle for many countries to solve, but so far in 2021, the pieces of the puzzle seem to be finally coming together.