Pandemic in America: masks are left in the north and concerns remain in the south | International | News

The United States and Brazil are the most affected countries on the continent, but they are currently experiencing very different times.

America is the continent most affected by the coronavirus pandemic.

The suspicion felt by a good part of the 275.54 million vaccinated in the US for not wearing a mask on the streets, the increase in infections in Brazil and a crisis of doctors in Venezuela show the continuous ups and downs of the health crisis that America continues to experience.

The US remains number one in the world in vaccinations according to Our World in Data, but also as the most affected country with 32’995,817 confirmed cases and 587,188 deaths from the coronavirus, according to the Johns Hopkins University map.

Even so, the country has given new guidelines regarding wearing the mask for those vaccinated with almost 40% of the adult population fully inoculated, but citizens acknowledge being disoriented about in which spaces to use it and in which not.

And not only citizens have doubts. Many cafeterias and restaurants have modified their signs on their front doors to emphasize that they will continue to require the use of masks despite the new official recommendation that it is already necessary for those who are fully vaccinated.

South America worries

The World Health Organization (WHO) pointed out that global cases of COVID-19 fell by 12% last week, thus confirming the downward trend that began at the end of April, although with worrying exceptions such as Brazil, Argentina and Colombia.

In America, with 65.1 million infections and 1.59 million deaths, 124,762 cases and 3,129 additional deaths were reported in the last 24 hours, which represents a relative increase of 0.19% in cases and a relative increase 0.20% in deaths, compared to the previous day.

Despite this, mainly due to the fall in cases in the United States (21% last week), in the American continent there is a general downward trend in infections, with 3% fewer positives.

Colombia and Brazil

The protests in Colombia, which began on April 28 and which today is developing its fourth day of national strike, have put the health crisis in the country at risk with 96% occupancy in Intensive Care Units (ICU) as is in the case of Bogotá, Medellín and Barranquilla.

The number of infections already reaches 3’161,126 and the number of deaths to 82,743, in the third peak of the disease. In the midst of this situation, the Government on Wednesday reopened its land, sea and river borders with Panama, Ecuador, Peru and Brazil, closed 14 months ago, to help reactivate the Colombian economy.

The National Health Surveillance Agency of Brazil (Anvisa) received the request for the emergency use of the Convidecia vaccine, developed by the Chinese laboratory CanSino and which would be the second in the country from the Asian nation.

The South American giant, together with the United States and India, is one of the three countries most affected by covid-19 and already registers 441,691 deaths with more than 15.7 million confirmed cases, despite the fact that more than 70 million vaccines have been distributed and almost 54.4 million of them applied, the country has inoculated with two doses only 8.3% of its population.

Venezuela, Argentina and Mexico

According to the NGO Médicos Unidos de Venezuela, which constantly disseminates the number of health sector workers who have lost their lives, providing data, identities and states in which the country resided, more than half a thousand physicians (549) died. by the virus.

Added to this is the exodus of health professionals due to the economic and social crisis affecting 32,000 doctors until March of last year, when the pandemic began, while in the specialty of bioanalysis and nursing, until December 2020, there had been produced an exodus of between 60% and 70% of the total.

The contagion situation in Argentina keeps the health authorities on alert after a new record of daily infections was reported today with 39,652 positive cases in the last 24 hours, bringing the total number of cases to 3,411,160 and deaths to 72,265.

Since the end of March, the country has been going through a dizzying increase in covid-19 cases, with a growing level of occupancy of beds in ICUs and slow vaccination, since so far more than 10 million doses have been inoculated, but only little more. of 2 million correspond to the second application.

As of June 7, the children and young people of Mexico City will resume face-to-face classes, after more than a year without classes for its 30 million students and after the vaccination of educational personnel.

More than 356,000 teachers and educational personnel are expected to receive the CanSino single-dose vaccine in the capital, where vaccination sites continue to work at a good pace to meet the goal, set for next Saturday, May 22. (I)

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