Paraguay has South America's best record on coronavirus after early lockdown
15 April, 2020
As a worldwide coronavirus pandemic spread round the world, landlocked Paraguay didn't wait, imposing a strict lockdown in early March, before neighboring countries. The result: the fewest cases within the region.
The grains producer with a population of around 7 million people has just 159 confirmed cases and 7 deaths. Just three of the infected people are hospitalized, with one in medical care , health ministry data shows.
That compares with over 2,000 cases in Argentina, 10,000 in Peru, almost 8,000 in Chile, and 25,000 in Brazil. Smaller neighbor Uruguay has almost 500 confirmed cases while Bolivia has 354.
Luis Alberto Escoto, representative of the planet Health Organization in Paraguay, told Reuters the country's success was thanks to aggressive social distancing measures.
"Their best result are often attributed to adoption of those and therefore the attitude that the population has despite living during a difficult context, of inequality and poverty," he said.
Paraguay's government shut schools and suspended large events within the second week of March. Shortly later, it closed its borders, airports and ordered a complete quarantine of the population with only a few exceptions.
Police and military watch the streets and shops and have punished quite thousand people for violating restrictions.
The South American nation, however, also has one among rock bottom test rates for the virus, with 26.2 tests per 100,000 inhabitants, consistent with the WHO and Pan American Health Organization. it's shortages of tests and a scarcity of qualified personnel.
It has also had trouble getting ventilators and protective equipment for medical personnel, a part of the rationale President Mario Abdo extended the quarantine on Monday.
Escoto, however, said this wasn't masking a hidden crisis, while local lawmakers emphasized the country's health system - though under-funded - wasn't buckling under the strain.
"There may be a certain under-reporting that exists. But the absence of mortality or serious cases saturating the system suggests there's not exponential community transmission yet," said Senator and former Minister of Health Esperanza Martínez.
"The fear is that when these measures are lifted without having a rapid test strategy," she added, "Paraguay may get the type of peaks that have occurred in other countries."
Source: www.thejakartapost.com
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