Early lockdowns have helped blunt the impact of covid-19. But governments are under pressure to loosen them
street vendors set up an open-air food market this week in Huáscar, a shantytown in north-eastern Lima, defying Peru’s strict lockdown against covid-19. Hundreds of seasonal workers have broken quarantine, too, to travel back from the coast after the summer harvests to their homes in Andean villages. In locked-down Colombia, in Bogotá suburbs like Ciudad Bolívar and Soacha, life goes on more or less normally. Vendors offer coffee and corn bread on the street.
In most cases, the minority who are not respecting lockdowns are acting out of necessity. Data from Google, which tracks mobile phones, show more movement in poorer states and provinces in many countries. Several national governments, including those in Colombia and Peru, have been swift to get emergency payments to some of their poorer citizens. But that is a big challenge: one out of two Latin Americans works informally, often relying on daily cash takings.
Many officials expect the epidemic to peak in May. But they are navigating through a fog of unknowing. Though they vary greatly across countries, the statistical curves of infection and deaths in Latin America are slightly below those in Europe and the United States. It is not clear why. Some think the data are unreliable. Mexico doesn’t pretend to count more than a sample of cases, for example. There may be other explanations.
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