Coronavirus: Latin America

It was slightly over two weeks ago that the first case of COVID-19 popped up in Latin America. The first case was confirmed in Brazil on Thursday, February 27th.

Per Worldometer the cases as of March 13th (Friday) have continued to grow across the region though at admittedly low numbers:

Brazil: 151
Chile: 43
Peru: 38
Argentina: 34
Panama: 27
Ecuador: 23
Costa Rica: 23
Colombia: 16
Bolivia: 10
French Guiana: 6
Paraguay: 6
Uruguay: 4
Honduras: 2
Venezuela: 2
Guyana: 1
Guatemala: 1
Suriname: 1



I believe that covers all the countries in Central and South America.

In Brazil, the cases have spiked from 1 to 151 in just over two weeks. And we know that a case in Brazil was linked to President Trump. The Guardian reports:

A Brazilian official who met Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago last weekend has tested positive for coronavirus.

Fabio Wajngarten, communications secretary to Jair Bolsonaro, accompanied the Brazilian president on a visit to Florida, where the two leaders dined together. 

The acting Brazilian ambassador Nestor Forster has also tested positive for the virus. He was at the same dinner table as President Trump on Saturday.

It was reported that Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro had tested positive for the virus, but that was later denied.

Since this dinner happened nearly a week ago, one can probably say that it is more likely than not that President Trump did not get infected with the virus, but he isn't out of the woods yet.

Doing a Google search, most of the news about the virus dealt with Presidents Trump and Bolsonaro.  I did find a Reuters article that stated on March 10th that there were 34 confirmed cases. So between Tuesday and Friday, the cases jumped from 34 to 151.

One country that should concern most of us is Venezuela. The Associated Press reported on Friday, March 13:

Venezuela confirmed its first two cases of the coronavirus Friday, deepening anxiety in a crisis-stricken nation where many hospitals lack basics such as water and soap and struggle to treat even basic ailments. 

The announcement prompted President Iván Duque of neighboring Colombia to order his nation’s border with Venezuela closed as a coronavirus containment measure. 

One had contacted the virus in Spain. The other traveled through the U.S., Italy and Spain. Colombia currently has more cases than Venezuela (16 vs 2), but they immediately shut down the border. That's 2 cases in a population of around 30 million. But the reasoning makes sense as Venezuela is hard hit via US sanctions and a decay of their oil production. There is no indication in the article of how long the two individuals were showing symptoms before going to the hospital. I'll have to keep an eye on this. There is the potential that these two individuals infected many others.

Also, this is another country where I felt for sure the first infection would be traced back to China. Indonesia's first case was from Malaysia (a Japanese woman living in Malaysia) and not from China even though there was a Harvard study that looked at the statistical probabilities based on Wuhan to Indonesia travel. From what I've read, the first cases across various African nations did not originate in China even though there are many Chinese working in Africa. (Egypt being the only exception to that rule.) I just personally find that interesting. I suspect that there are more countries where tracing leads back to Italy/Iran versus China where this virus started.

I found this note interesting regarding Chile via Reuters:

Chilean President Sebastian Pinera announced a ban on public events with more than 500 people on Friday, as the government tries to curtail the spread of coronavirus even as massive social demonstrations are planned in the coming weeks.

So the coronavirus may or may not prevent demonstrations. Of course, if the demonstrations do occur, we might see the number of cases spike in a week.

One final country review, Uruguay via Reuters reported their first four cases. Those individuals had traveled to Milan. The article states between March 3rd and 6th. Once again, how many days were those individuals contagious before going to the hospital? Maybe 2 or 3 days? How many people did they come into contact with and spread the virus to those individuals? We'll find out in the next week.