Experts Afraid That Latin America’s Haste To Reopen Their Economies Could Lead To A Coronavirus 'Massacre'

Since being detected in December 2019, the coronavirus pandemic is yet to end its terrifying control across the globe. But despite the fact that experts are still unsure about the virus’ pattern and whether it will resurge again, Brazil and Mexico, having one of the world’s highest number of fatalities, are still in a hurry to open their economies and return to normal life.

To recap, Brazil has recorded over 587,000 infections and a death toll of more than 32,000. While Mexico made a record of daily deaths with 1,262 deaths alone on June 2. The latter, as of writing, has close to 102,000 infections and 11,729 dead. In fact, Brazil comes second after the U.S. in its number of infections recorded to date.

But despite the towering numbers, both countries began June by reopening their economy in parts, followed by countries like Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Rio and Venezuela.

And meanwhile, Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, is doing what he has done so far- downplaying the crisis. “I regret every death but that’s everyone’s destiny,” he said. Following a similar stance, Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has embarked on a six-state tour and has expressed that Mexico needs to “little by little normalize economic, social and cultural activities.”

“We have to now move towards this new normality because the country’s economy and the wellbeing of our people depends on it,” he said.

But the health officials of both the countries do not share the opinions of their leaders and are afraid that the pandemic isn’t under control enough for economies to ditch every social distancing measure and return to the former definition of normal.

“It should be very clear … we are still a long way from the end of this epidemic,” Hugo López-Gatell Ramírez told Mexico’s El Universal.

“What is happening is an absurdity,” said Paulo Lotufo, an epidemiologist at the University of São Paulo. He warned the unprepared lifting of rules may trigger the infection rate to go higher and could even create a particularly “catastrophic” situation in the Amazon region.

“The outlook is awful,” Lotufo further said, adding that given the current scenario it is appearing more likely that Brazil will surpass it predicted death toll of 125,000.

“It is our duty to alert the population to the fact that they’ve been given the green light to go to the slaughterhouse,” said Domingos Alves from the academic monitoring group Covid-19 Brasil. He added that the relaxation could cause a Covid-19 “massacre” in the states of Rio, São Paulo and Amazonas -- the hardest-hit areas in the nation.