A PAHO news release: PAHO director says rising cases of COVID-19 in Amazon basin “demands swift response”. Excerpt:
Washington, D.C., March 3, 2021 (PAHO) Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) Director Carissa F. Etienne called attention to rising cases of COVID-19 in the northern Amazon basin “that demands a swift response.”
“In Peru’s Amazonian state of Loreto, every ICU bed is occupied by a COVID patient,” she said, and Colombia’s state of Amazonas is reporting the country’s highest COVID rates.
Dr. Etienne noted that “in Brazil, the Amazonian state of Acre faces an emergency due to a deadly combination of COVID-19 infections, a dengue epidemic and flooding in several cities. Nearly 94% of ICUs are occupied and the health system risks collapsing as more and more patients require hospitalization. Other Brazilian states are also reporting high ICU occupancy rates, putting the country on alert.”
But while the Americas continues to be the “epicenter” of the pandemic, Dr. Etienne said, it is behind in vaccination because most countries cannot access the doses they need through bilateral agreements with the manufacturers.
“Expanding equitable access to COVID vaccines in the Americas must be a global priority,” she asserted.
“Wealthy countries are rolling out vaccines, while many nations have yet to receive a single dose,” she continued. “This disparity harms our principles of solidarity. But more than that, it’s a self-defeating strategy. As long as COVID-19 endures in one part of the world, the rest of the world can never be safe.”
She pointed out that in the past week, “the Americas accounted for 55% of deaths reported worldwide.”
In total 34,000 people died from COVID-19 in the Americas in the past week and 1.1. million were infected. Since the start of the pandemic, 51 million people have been infected regionally.
Other COVID-19 hot spots are in El Salvador, the indigenous province of Guna Yala in Panama, and Guatemala’s northern municipalities, Dr. Etienne reported.
“The diversity of scenarios across the Americas reminds us that complacency can be deadly,” Dr. Etienne said. “Without effective control measures, in just a couple of weeks, infection and hospitalization rates can spike drastically. We must continue to monitor infection rates closely and rely on proven public health measures when the virus surges.”
