COVID-19: A Swallow Does Not Make a Summer

When today you type “coronavirus” in Internet search engines, mostly appears materials and images related to the vaccination against COVID-19.

However, the panorama, at least in Latin America, is not that one; a swallow does not make a summer, as the saying goes.

Very recently, the International Federation of Red Cross Societies (IFRC) warned that the pandemic "is far from over in America", and the statistics of deaths and infections confirm so.

Latin America continues to be the region on the planet with the highest number of COVID-19 cases and the highest death toll.

More than a million Latin Americans have died from the new coronavirus, and these deaths constitute a third of all those that have occurred on the planet.

But, from what it appears in Internet, it seems as if the pandemic is already a thing of the past, one more way of being unknown and invisible.

The recent data, however, reflects an alarming and dramatic reality and very different from that of crowded beaches with vacationers, happy people wandering along boulevards and drinking in bars.

In our region, those infected continue to increase: ten of the fifteen countries that reported the highest number of cases worldwide are in Latin America and the Caribbean. Uruguay, Argentina, and Costa Rica are on top of the list, followed by Trinidad and Tobago, Suriname, and Brazil, the Red Cross said.

For every 100,000 inhabitants, Latin America reports 162 deaths, while, on average, worldwide there are 46 deaths for every 100,000 people.

The vaccination, despite so much European image of shoulders getting pinched with syringes, is still too slow and uneven. Vaccine availability is insufficient in most of the continent.

About 150 days after the beginning of the vaccination worldwide, "less than two out of every thousand vaccines have been administered in the poorest countries of the Americas," indicates the IFRC Regional Director for the Americas, Martha Keays.

The United States concentrates almost half of the doses administered in the region, and, paradoxically, they are offering either money, marijuana, hamburgers as an incentive for citizens to go to and get vaccinated, what a sore joke.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director General, recalled that the coronavirus pandemic is "very far" from over, and that if there´s only one way to end the disease, it´s by betting on the vaccines.

Of course, betting on vaccines and solidarity for the less developed countries, those forgotten by almost everyone, except for the coronavirus.

Translated by Amilkal Labañino / CubaSí Translation Staff