America, which reports 55.7 million people infected with coronavirus, is resuming its closure on Easter Eve due to an alarming rise in cases and deaths and fears that the three “variants of concern” are unleashing in the region.
According to data from Johns Hopkins University in the United States, the continent already has 55,785,829 people who have contracted the disease.
The figure, which continues to rise, has forced authorities in much of the region to recreate mandatory or crooked night quarantines to protect the population, especially due to the approach of Holy Week.
This season, in which Catholic believers take to the streets to visit pilgrimage sites, fears of a new and fatal pandemic wave in this part of the world are growing.
Variants of concern for PAHO
Fear intensifies given that the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) reported on Friday that 32 countries and territories in the United States have detected cases of infection with one of the three “worrying variants” of the virus that causes covid – 19, SARS-CoV-2.
These variants, the international organization explained, “may increase the transmissibility of the virus and its virulence or reduce the effectiveness of social public health measures and diagnoses, vaccines and therapies.”
Currently, it is known that the places that reported one or more of these variants are Argentina, Aruba, Barbados, Belize, Brazil, Bonaire, Canada, Cayman Islands, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Curaçao, Dominican Republic, Ecuador , French Guiana and Guadeloupe.
They also include Jamaica, Martinique, Mexico, Panama, Peru, Puerto Rico, Saint Barthelemy, Saint Martin, Saint Lucia, Saint Maarten, Trinidad and Tobago, the Turks and Caicos Islands, the United States, Uruguay and Venezuela.
To date, the World Health Organization has classified three “variants of concern” of SARS-CoV-2, which have been identified in the United Kingdom, South Africa and Brazil and are known as B.1.1.7, B 1.351 and B.1.1.28.1.
Megaquarantine in Chile
Chile has become a veritable case study, considered a global example of the agility with which it has vaccinated its population, but in which cases rise uncontrollably to the point where its inhabitants are preparing today for a megaquarantine weekend.
There, 97% of the nearly 19 million residents will be limited and shopping permits will be suspended after new daily infections began to break records, surpassing the 7,600 barrier.
In the South American country, the hospital occupancy is 95%, only 160 intensive care beds are available and it is known that the Brazilian and British variants of the disease are circulating.
The drastic measure follows that taken in May-August last year, in the worst months of the pandemic for Chileans, which has so far accumulated 962,321 infected and 22,587 deaths, despite the fact that already 40% of its inhabitants have received at least one dose of the vaccine.
When trying to explain the case of Chile, the head of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) anti-covert technical unit, Maria Van Kerkhove, said that crowded places and everything that needs to continue along with vaccination. “
Brazil and Mexico have hope for vaccines
Two of the world’s most Catholic countries, Brazil and Mexico, hold out hope that the virus will not claim more victims because of processions, masses and other religious holidays during Holy Week.
And it is that the South American giant, Brazil, registered 3,650 deaths caused by covid-19 in the last 24 hours, a record that raised the total number to 307,112.
In addition, 84,245 new people were infected this Friday, bringing the number of people infected by 12,404,414.
The alarming figures come on the same day that it was reported that there are at least two ongoing trials to develop Brazilian vaccines against covid-19, although it will take several months for the first to be used openly.
Meanwhile, this Friday, Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro have entered a long period of celebration for Holy Week, which will last ten days.
To do this, the mayors have decided to advance some holidays this year and next and ban non-essential activities.
In turn, Mexico has surpassed 200,000 deaths due to covid-19, the third highest figure in the world, amid hopes of speeding up its vaccination plan, but with the threat of a third wave after the Easter holidays.
The optimism of immunization faces the reality of a “third wave” of infections that would arrive after Easter, which will leave “a raw source”, warned Carolina Gómez, an expert at the Public Health Society of Mexico.
To prevent this, the Mexican government has published a decalogue recommending that you travel with your family to a place close to home and do so with groups of up to five people.
Fear does not go away
The fear of coronavirus persists so much in America that the Argentine government will suspend all scheduled flights linking the country to Brazil, Chile and Mexico from Saturday.
Also, from March 27 until Flower Sunday (April 4), Paraguay will return to a strict quarantine to slow down the transmission of the virus and to decompress hospitals, crowded with patients and without intensive care beds.
Likewise, the Colombian government has decreed night extinguishers for the next two weekends, and a limit of 100 people on the beach has been ordered in Guatemala for Holy Week.