November 30, 2021

Should Latin America worry about a new COVID-19 wave?

topic:	Health and Sanitation
located:	Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Peru
editor:	Ellen Nemitz

The feeling in Brazil is relaxed right now, almost as if the pandemic were over: schools and universities are going back to in-person classes, companies are asking their employees to leave the home office and summer vacations will likely be at the beach without face masks. 

In fact, promising statistics may give people this false sensation. The number of new cases and the death toll dropped drastically in Brazil. With more than 62 percent of the population fully vaccinated and nearly 75 percent with at least one dose administered, according to national statistics, an average of 9,000 new people have been testing positive per day - a drop of around 85% compared to the last peaks in June and March. As for the death toll, the relief is also remarkable: the 7-day rolling average decreased from more than 3,000 in April to 228 as of 27 November, according to Our World in Data. 

On the other hand, analysing the graphics of countries such as Argentina, Chile, Bolivia and Uruguay, it is possible to notice a slight inclination upwards, although the situation is actually much better than at the peak months ago.

While people in Latin America try to resume their normal pre-pandemic lives - either for leisure or for a real necessity of recovering the economy - the world's eyes lay both on Europe and South Africa. The northern hemisphere is experiencing a new wave of COVID-19 and the new variant Ômicron, first identified in Africa, has started to spread around the globe and tighten once again the travel restrictions which were slowly being eased (although the World Health Organisation is not yet sure about the potential damage this new variant could produce, it was classified was a concerning one).  

"A window into the future." This is how health agencies are describing Europe regarding the situation across the Americas, reports the Washington Post. It makes a lot of sense. Although there are several aspects that should be analysed when it comes to the way the disease spreads throughout a country, this is not the first time that a wave of COVID-19 in Europe precedes a delayed tsunami in the Americas. It happened in the first moments of the pandemic back in 2020 and in the beginning of 2021, when Brazil saw the daily death toll surpass the mark of 4,000 people just a few weeks after a local relief and the spike of cases in Europe. 

One particular city in Brazil can also serve as a "thermometer" of what could happen in the near future if the necessary measures of prevention are not continued - including the cancellation of big events such as New Year's Eve and carnival, which some cities have already announced. Serrana, a small town in the state of São Paulo, had its population fully vaccinated much earlier than the rest of Brazil in order to test the effectiveness of the CoronaVac vaccine, produced in partnership with the national laboratory Butantan. Now, according to Butantan, the number of new cases in the city has increased, although hospitalisations and deaths remain low. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has proven to be a lesson that we learn on the way. It is virtually impossible to predict what is going to happen. Nonetheless, we can know for sure that "no one is safe until everyone is safe," that vaccines save lives and non-pharmacological measures such as face masks are effective and relatively easy to be applied. Latin America should not lower its guard now. It is still time to be careful and keep vaccinating as much as possible. The pandemic is not over, and it is up to all of us to overcome it.  

Photo by De an Sun

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