The coronavirus pandemic has hit Latin America particularly hard. Unlike its wealthier North American neighbors and Europe, the region lacks both the financial firepower and infrastructure to lessen the effects of the pandemic on its citizens or come up with quick solutions. As of last week, Latin America recorded 958,023 coronavirus-related deaths, accounting for nearly a third of the global death toll. The region is set to hit one million deaths this month.
The pandemic is having devastating consequences beyond those who have lost loved ones. As economies are disrupted and lockdown measures remain in place to prevent further infections, large sects of every country’s populations are sliding deeper into poverty. Underfunded healthcare systems and inoculation programs have resulted in patients being unable to get proper care. “There are no vaccines. There are no intensive care beds. There are no medicines. Please, for humanity’s sake, help us!” exclaimed Miriam Mota in Lima.
Her desperation is shared throughout the region. Leaders like Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, Argentina’s Alberto Fernandez, Mexico’s Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Colombia’s Iván Duque have come under fire for their handling of the pandemic and the rising death tolls, poverty and unemployment levels in their respective countries.
Recorded Covid deaths are also very likely a significant undercount. In Peru, for example, 1.85 million Covid cases have been recorded with 64,000 deaths, but experts say that the toll could actually be three times as high. Brazil, where right-wing Bolsonaro has railed against lockdown measures and downplayed the seriousness of the virus, has recorded the most deaths globally after the United States, but the number of unrecorded deaths is in all likelihood much higher. Additionally, the emergence of virus mutations in the region, like the more transmissible P1 variant, has been linked to the severity of breakouts in countries like Brazil, Uruguay, and Bolivia.
The effects of the pandemic are likely to outlive the virus itself. A spike in poverty and unemployment has stoked unrest in countries like Colombia, where a protest on a now-recanted tax haul has transformed into a general repudiation of inequality and resulted in dozens of deaths. We will see the consequences at the polls—in Peru, for example, a polarized presidential election is being led by a socialist candidate.
The region, unlike its North American, European, and Asian counterparts, lacks the technology and infrastructure to develop or manufacture vaccines to begin to get the pandemic under control. A deal to produce the AstraZeneca vaccine in Argentina and Mexico has been stalled by manufacturing hold-ups, and supplies of Chinese and Russian vaccines are insufficient. While wealthier Latin Americans have begun to travel to Florida or Texas to receive their vaccines, this is not an option for the vast majority of people in the region.
With the United States being on track to having a greater supply of vaccines than are needed for domestic use, the Biden administration recently announced it would share 60 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine. The final list of countries who will be beneficiaries has not been announced. As a result, a bipartisan effort led by senators Bob Menendez, Tim Kaine and Marco Rubio is calling on the administration to prioritize Latin America and the Caribbean.
“It is critical that the United States expand our efforts to ensure that the world’s most vulnerable are vaccinated,” wrote the senators in a letter to the President. They lauded the administration’s aid to its Canadian and Mexican neighbors and encouraged similar support for the rest of the region. “Nearly 77 percent of all visitors to the United States thus far in 2021 have come from Latin America and the Caribbean, many to visit family members. Given the frequency and number of people traveling between the region and the United States, we urge you to quickly develop a plan to share vaccines with countries in need,” they wrote. Additionally, they argued that facilitating vaccine access to the region would be strategic for the national security of the United States. “Without U.S. engagement and leadership, our competitors will continue efforts to use their less effective vaccines as leverage to coerce Latin America and Caribbean nations in support of a diplomatic agenda inimical to ours. In just one example, earlier this year, China promised vaccine shipments to Paraguay in exchange for Paraguayan government ceasing recognition of Taiwan,” they noted. To read the letter in its entirety, click here.