Since the first case of Covid-19 in Latin America and the Caribbean was detected on February 26, the death toll from the coronavirus has hovered around 17,000, more than half of it in Brazil. Although certainly underestimated by some local health authorities, this figure shows that, for a population of around 630 million people, the subcontinent has so far been less affected than Asia, Europe or the United States. A finding that has led some countries to consider a gradual deconfinement, before changing their mind in the face of the increase in cases in recent days and the alerts of epidemiologists about the danger of an overly hasty reopening.
The regional disparities are enormous. Costa Rica, a small Central American country of 5 million, had just six dead on Friday May 8, while neighboring Panama, with 900,000 fewer, had 225. "Costa Rica has done a remarkable job, said Marcos Espinal, director of the communicable diseases department of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), in particular thanks to mobile teams that visit patients almost every day. The country is also carrying out numerous tests, and the government has purchased ventilators, equipment for carers … ”
A country without an army, Costa Rica is, along with Cuba, Argentina and Uruguay, one of the only countries in the region to follow PAHO's recommendation to invest more than 6% of its domestic product (GDP) in the health system. "The lesson that this pandemic should teach to the heads of state of the region, particularly prone to epidemics like dengue or zika, is the need for continuous, sustained and quality investment in health", insists M. Espinal.
Cultural factor
And to give the counterexample of Ecuador, with 28 818 contaminations and 1,704 deaths as of May 8 (a figure that epidemiologists deem very underestimated) and its terrible images of corpses abandoned in the streets of Guayaquil: public health spending represented only 2.7% of GDP in 2019, due to budgetary restrictions decided by President Lenin Moreno.
Other countries in Latin America have so far managed to contain the epidemic. This is the case of Argentina, where the death toll, May 293 to May 8, is particularly low for a population of 44 million. Or Chile, with 294 dead. "Latin America has been less affected because of several factors, which we do not yet know which is predominant, explains Mr. Espinal. On the one hand, Latin America does not have as much tourism and trade as it does in Asia or Europe. On the other hand, the population is younger than in Europe (28 years of average age, against 43 years in the European Union), which certainly had an impact on mortality. "
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