COVID-19 Deaths in Latin America Surpass One Million as Outbreak Worsens

From the dusty highlands of Bolivia to the Brazilian metropolis of Sao Paulo, the pandemic has swamped underfunded healthcare systems after spreading fast across nations where many people survive hand-to-mouth and have been unable to enter lockdown.

In Peru, among the hardest hit nations in the region, COVID-19 patients have died in crowded hospital corridors of the capital Lima. Deep in the Amazon jungles of Brazil, many residents of the city of Manaus have died at home with no oxygen to fill damaged lungs, after supplies ran out there this year.

With cases falling in Europe, Asia and North America, and flat in Africa, South America is the only region where new infections are rising rapidly on a per capita basis, according to Our World in Data. Although India is currently struggling through one of the world's worst outbreaks of the pandemic.

On average in May, 31 per cent of the COVID-19 deaths in the world have been in Latin America and the Caribbean - home to just 8.4 per cent of the global population.

Doctors and epidemiologists say the coronavirus pandemic took unprepared governments by surprise last year and its impact has been worsened by leaders who downplayed its gravity and failed to secure timely vaccine supplies.

The top eight countries registering the most COVID-19 deaths per capita over the past week were all in Latin America.

Globally, the real number of dead from the pandemic was "at least two to three times higher than officially reported," Dr. Samira Asma, the World Health Organization’s assistant director-general in charge of data told reporters.

"Instead of preparing for the pandemic, we minimized the disease, saying the tropical heat would deactivate the virus," said Dr. Francisco Moreno Sanchez, head of the COVID-19 program at one of Mexico's main hospitals and a critic of the government's vaccination plan.

"Unfortunately, we are among the most-affected regions, where the handling of the pandemic has been the most mistaken, and now we are suffering the consequences," the epidemiologist told Reuters.

With the death toll steadily mounting, grave diggers in several countries have been forced to expand cemeteries with row after row of new tombs. In a break with the region's predominantly Catholic traditional culture, dead are often buried with few or no relatives there to say goodbye.

Nearly 90 per cent of the fatalities have been notched in just five countries, which represent 70 per cent of the region’s total population: Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Argentina and Peru.

But most of the deaths - more than 446,000 - have occurred in Brazil, which became a coronavirus epicentre this year with the second-deadliest outbreak outside the United States, though it appears likely to be surpassed soon by India.

"Right now the situation is terrible. We’ve never had something like this in our country,” Jacil Farias, an 82-year-old pensioner from Brazil.

Brazil recorded 2,215 new deaths from COVID-19 in 24 hours, the Health Ministry said on Friday, pushing Latin America's total to over one million COVID-19 fatalities.

The government of far-right Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, a vaccine sceptic and opponent of lockdowns, is being investigated by a parliamentary commission for failing to plan a national drive against COVID-19 and not buying vaccines in time.

Brazil remains the third most-affected country in the world in terms of confirmed COVID-19 cases, behind only India and the United States. It has the highest death toll in the region, followed by Mexico and Colombia, which combined represent about 74 per cent of all the deaths Latin America.

The daily death toll in South America had slowed in May to 3,872, from an average of 4,558 people in April, according to a Reuters analysis. But cases are on the rise again and deaths are a lagging indicator, typically rising weeks after a surge in new infections.

Vaccinations in South America lag behind much of the world.

In South America, just 15 per cent of people have received at least one dose compared with 28 per cent in Europe and 34 per cent in North America. Only Asia and Africa are lower at 5 per cent and 1 per cent, respectively, according to Our World in Data through May 19.

The Pan American Health Organization (Paho) has criticized "glaring gaps" in access to COVID-19 vaccines in Latin America, compared to the United States, which has had the lion's share of the 400 million doses administered so far in the Americas.

"Just three per cent of Latin Americans have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19. We urgently need more vaccines," Paho director Carissa Etienne told reporters this week.

Vaccine supplies have been slow to arrive in most countries and inoculation programmes have been disorganized in some.

"Vaccination has lacked strategic planning," said pediatric surgeon Kurt Paulsen, who runs a vaccination site in Bolivia. "At first, they brought lots of different vaccines with no information to show people what they are being injected with."

Uruguay, which was lauded throughout much of 2020 as a model for managing the pandemic, hit rock bottom in April and currently has the highest global daily death rate.

In the last two weeks, an average of 20.73 inhabitants per million died each day, the highest in the world followed by Argentina (14.16) and Colombia (13.22), according to an AFP count.

Carla Romero, a nursing assistant at an intensive care center in the capital Montevideo, told AFP that it was difficult to see the virus as a genuine threat until the fatalities are "you're dead, until it happens in your family".