The fear in numbers: America accumulates half of the cases of COVID-19 in the world

Brazil, with 212 million inhabitants, exceeds the records of the entire Asian continent, which does not reach one million infections, despite having 4,463 million inhabitants

The pandemic caused by the new SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, causing the COVID-19 disease, is not only wreaking havoc in the United States, the global epicenter of the outbreak, but also in Latin America, a region that already has more than 100,000 deceased and two million positive cases. If we add the United States and Canada, the continent accumulates at least half of the contagions registered in the world.

For almost four months, Latin American citizens have been under strict confinement measures in order to prevent the massive spread of COVID-19. But many governments — despite repeated warnings from the World Health Organization (WHO) — did not apply effective health prevention measures, nor did they carry out sufficient tests to detect, in time, the presence of the virus in their territories. In fact, they even underestimated it, causing the loss of the effort and sacrifice made by the vast majority of the inhabitants.

The economic losses are still unquantifiable. Millions of jobs lost, companies closings -with greater impact on small and personal enterprises-, mass evictions, increased misery, poverty and hunger; radicalization of abuses against the historically most vulnerable and migrant sectors; an increase in adults and children living on the street, and another endless number of negative stories that have revealed the poor and worn seams that interweave Latin American society.

After four agonizing months, authorities have not been able to control the COVID -19 pandemic in the entire American continent, an extended territory that is the world epicenter of the outbreak with two extremely worrying outbreaks: the United States and Brazil, the two nations with the worst figures for the disease, both in number of infected patients and in the number of fatalities; and not by chance, led by two far-right regimes: to the north of the continent the magnate Donald Trump, and to the south the also businessman, religious fanatic and Trump admirer, Jair Bolsonaro; both -also- believers in the fact that they should stop counting the cases or carry out tests so as not to continue to score the negative ranking of the coronavirus.

Both governments, since the pandemic came to life in Asia and Europe, approached the situation with notable indifference, said it was a flu and hoped that nothing would happen to their countries. Months later, the situation in the countries that denounced the terrible nature of this disease began to live relatively normally, with a virus that is still present but seemed under control, while in Latin America, and above all in the United States and Brazil, the pandemic has become an uncontrollable monster that leaves the terrible stories of what happened in China, Italy, Spain and other countries as practically insignificant.

This is how the American continent, especially Latin America and the Caribbean, find themselves with an alarming, uncontrollable spread of the coronavirus, with exponential levels of infections never seen before in the half year that COVID-19 has been circulating on the planet, with the worst figures on a global scale, both in infections and deaths and with the warning of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) that the disease has not yet reached its peak.

COVID-19 and its lethal figures

While the number of deaths in the world exceeds 470,716 victims of COVID-19, as of June 22, in America there have been almost half of those fatal cases, exceeding 225,000 people killed by the disease.

Of that total, the US accounts for more than 122,000 deaths and Brazil passes by the 53,000 fatalities. But these are not the only countries on the continent with alarming behavior regarding the lethality of the virus.

Other countries with chilling figures appear on the continent’s black list: Mexico, for example, has more than 24,000 victims; Canada at least 8,500; Peru heading to 9,000, Chile almost 5,000 and rising; Ecuador at least 4,230; Colombia more than 2,600; Argentina over 1,000, Bolivia close to 800, the Dominican Republic close to 700, Panama over 500, Honduras close to 400 and El Salvador over 100. These countries exceed the three digits number of deaths.

The virus, which has infected more than nine million people worldwide, has touched more than four million in the American continent.

In the United States alone, the number of infected amounts to 2.4 million; while in Brazil it is close to 1.2 million positive cases. But the most alarming thing is not these two countries, which in themselves are of concern to the entire region -especially their neighboring countries- but what is happening in populations such as those of Peru, Chile, Ecuador, Colombia and Bolivia in South America; and in Central America and the Caribbean with Panama, Honduras, El Salvador and the Dominican Republic, with the behavior of the virus that is rising uncontrollably and with an impact that cannot yet be calculated due to the lack of diagnostic tests, poor management of the health situation and possible concealment of figures.

There are also two countries such as Argentina and Mexico, which have been severely affected by the pandemic but at the same time have governments that have been tactfully addressing sanitary measures and the flexibility of social distancing and confinement, something that does not occur in the rest of the countries mentioned, where their governments are betting on leaving behind quarantine measures to make way for the total restoration of economic activity.

In Mexico, the number of infections reaches 196,000 people and 24,000 deaths. For its part, Argentina registers almost 50 thousand infections and more than 1,000 deaths.

This is how Latin America and the Caribbean have become the focus of the new coronavirus, a region where the pandemic attacks with greater force in recent days, with more than 100,000 deaths and over two million infections.

To be feared: Peru, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Bolivia

It has already been mentioned that Brazil, in the hands of the far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, is the most punished country in the region with almost 54 thousand deaths and close to 1.2 million confirmed infections, a sinister balance only surpassed in the world by the United States, which registers more than 122 thousand deaths and 2.4 million cases, according to Johns Hopkins University.

But there are data such as those recorded by Peru and Chile that set off alarms even more, since between the two they exceed 525 thousand infections and are among the 10 countries on the planet most affected by the pandemic. Only Peru has more than 268 thousand cases and occupies box six of the negative ranking, surpassed only by the United States, Brazil, Russia, India and the United Kingdom.

Peru is closely followed by Chile, with 259 thousand infections, a figure that places the Andean country in the seventh place in the world, already above Spain and Italy, the two european nations that were severely punished by COVID-19. Peru’s lethal figures are already close to 10,000 victims, with 8,700 deaths; while Chile counts 4,900, but with an exponential curve of cases that has practically become a straight line that points to the sky.

The same behavior of the virus occurs in Ecuador, Colombia and Bolivia, all countries, neighbors of the South American subcontinent. Ecuador, for example, where the government has been harshly criticized for applying ‘makeup’ to the true numbers of infected and dead, has more than 53,000 cases and 4,300 deaths.

Colombia, for its part, presents more than 77 thousand cases and 2,600 deaths, figures criticized by the Government of Venezuela, which accuses the Iván Duque regime of carrying underreporting by not doing the necessary amount of diagnostic tests to confirm positive cases. Almost 2000 positive cases have been accounted for by the Venezuelan authorities when registering, in recent weeks, the ‘imported’ cases of people who have arrived to Venezuelan territory infected, returning to their country due to the miserable living conditions they have to suffer in Colombian territory.

In fact, Venezuela keeps a record of community and imported cases to show the true behavior of COVID-19 in its territory. Of the 4,563 cases that Venezuela accounts for, with 39 deaths, the vast majority have occurred due to imported cases from migrants who return from countries such as Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile and Brazil, another percentage of people who have had contact with these migrants, and a smaller number of people from what os known as the ‘community cases’, that is, cases produced within the country.

Until recently, Venezuela counted just 10 deaths from COVID-19 and the number has now reached 35 victims after an outbreak detected in the Zulia state, bordering Colombia, in which the disease is presumed to have spread from a person who arrived infected from Colombia. Given this, Caracas maintains strict control over the shared borders with Brazil and Colombia, to try to prevent, at all costs, the virulence of the disease from spreading as it has done in these countries, especially in areas where there are illegal ‘transit’ roads called “trails”, where people enter Venezuelan territory without any type of sanitary control and who could generate a catastrophic situation.

The other country to fear on the list of South American countries who have no control over the pandemic and who are under — in addition — a dictatorial, repressive and corrupt regime is Bolivia with Jeanine Áñez in command, a De Facto regime that has also been denounced because it has been disguising the number of victims who, as happened in Ecuador, appear lying dead on the streets. According to the revealed figures, the pandemic has caused almost 28,000 cases and has killed nearly 900 people in Bolivia.

COVID-19 in the US and Brazil is still out of control

While the virus reflects its worst figures in Latin America these days, with a warning from the WHO, that even worse times are foreseen in the future, in the United States, far from lowering the incidence of cases, the coronavirus continues to spread with high virulence and lethality.

The pandemic in US territory has moved from the northeast to the south and west of the North American giant, even hitting its neighboring Canada with force, which accounts for more than 103,500 cases with almost 8,500 deaths.

According to the latest reports in the United States, more than a dozen states are reporting their highest number of new infections these days; as President Donald Trump promotes his supporters to hold mass rallies to try to seek his reelection to the White House.

The US figures maintain alarming averages of deaths with some 500 fatalities and 20,000 daily infections by coronavirus.

In the case of Brazil, with just 212 million inhabitants, its unfortunate figures exceed those registered in the entire Asian continent, which does not reach one million infections, despite having 4,463 million inhabitants. Meanwhile, Bolsonaro continues to approach the health crisis with indifference and disrespect for the victims, and has said that “unfortunately in a situation like this there are always deaths”.

While all this is happening and as the virus attacks with greater severity, the governments of the continent aspire to take the same measures that are executed in Europe with flexibilities in sanitary and preventive measures, especially those related to confinement and economic activity; situation that makes the region more susceptible to massive uncontrolled contagions and consequently to death, since most lack health systems with suitable levels to respond to pandemics such as the current one.

Dangerous rebound of the virus in China

Meanwhile, in China there have been new cases of contagion in the capital, Beijing, a situation that has already set off alarms in the world, as it could mean a second massive outbreak that would affect the planet, especially due to the relaxation of the measures of isolation in Europe and other regions that consider the pandemic to be “under control”.

The epidemic situation in Beijing is considered “extremely serious”, according to municipal authorities, who reported 27 new infections in the Chinese capital, while the pandemic continues to spread to Latin America and Europe cautiously returns to relative normality.

For more than a week, there have been more than 100 people infected in Beijing, most of them linked to the large wholesale market in Xinfadi, south of Beijing, which was closed immediately.

Beijing, where 21 million people live, is in “a race against the clock” against the new coronavirus, the mayor’s spokesman, Xu Hejian, admitted on Tuesday.

The authorities confined the inhabitants of 30 residential areas of the city, closed schools and leisure centers and carry out some 90,000 diagnostic tests a day, while fearing a “second wave” in the country in which this pandemic broke out, last year in December.

The rest of the world, including WHO, looks at China with a magnifying glass and with concern as if it were a mirror in which they see reflected what could happen in other territories in the near future.

350 million people at risk of death

In Europe, countries such as Germany, France, Belgium or Greece have lifted restrictions on the movement of travelers within the European Union since last week, considering that the pandemic is under control.

In New Zealand, where two weeks ago the authorities celebrated that there were no longer any cases of coronavirus in the country and withdrew the restrictions, two new cases were registered last Tuesday, the first in 25 days, in people who arrived from the United Kingdom.

A British study published last week concluded that 1.7 billion people, or 22% of the world’s population, have at least one risk factor that makes them more susceptible to contracting a severe form of covid-19.

Among these, 350 million people are particularly exposed and would need to be hospitalized if they caught the virus.

According to Angus Deaton, British Nobel Prize in Economics, the pandemic revealed the enormous inequalities that exist in the world, which may be further aggravated. According to him, the coronavirus pandemic is like an “X-ray that makes pre-existing inequalities even more visible”.