By Fabian Werner, Agustin Geist and Daniela Desantis
MONTEVIDEO / BUENOS AIRES / ASUNCIÓN (Reuters) – When the Copa America basketball started last month in the middle of a pandemic, the hosts in Cali, Colombia, took no chances.
Players and teams from participating male teams from all over Latin America lived in a local “bubble” without contact with strangers; all have been tested regularly for COVID-19.
What was missing from the contest was Brazil. The country was so devastated by the coronavirus, including a new highly contagious local variant known as P1, that Colombia would not allow Brazilians to land on its soil.
A double qualifying game for the World Cup was also canceled this month, after Colombia’s health minister said he would not allow a chartered flight of Brazilian players to land in Colombia for the game.
Sports are just the beginning. Brazil’s neighbors and business partners are taking steps to limit contact with the largest country in South America – and to contemplate more draconian ones. The fear is that the progress that many nations in the region have made against COVID-19 will be reversed by new waves of infection from Brazil, whose uncontrolled pandemic is incubating new virulent strains that concern medical experts around the world.
“It is a very alarming situation and a regional threat,” said Leda Guzzi, an infectious disease specialist and a member of the Argentine Society of Infectious Diseases.
Even Venezuela torn by the crisis has a lot to say. On Sunday, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro called Brazil “the worst threat in the world in terms of the coronavirus” and punished its leader, Jair Bolsonaro, for his “irresponsible attitude”.
Bolsonaro, who contracted COVID-19 last year and wears a mask only sporadically, has repeatedly minimized the crisis, although his country has accounted for more than 12 million confirmed COVID-19 infections and nearly 300,000 deaths, second only to the United States. He opposed the blockages and recommended unproven treatments, such as the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine.
Bolsonaro’s office did not respond to a request for comment. The president has repeatedly defended how his government is dealing with the pandemic.
In landlocked Paraguay, where COVID-19 cases are reaching record highs, the government on March 16 discouraged people from making non-essential trips, citing the “high number of record infections and deaths from COVID-19” in Brazil.
The Chilean government ordered in early March that all visitors to Brazil be taken to state-owned quarantine hotels to have a COVID-19 PCR test, and that they be kept there if they tested positive. These rules were tightened last week to impose a mandatory 72-hour stay at a transit hotel, even with a negative test.
In the department of Beni, Bolivia, an area similar to a state that shares a long land border with Brazil, cases of COVID-19 are exploding in the cities of Riberalta and Guayaramerín, according to Ernesto Moisés, Beni’s secretary of Human Development.
Many Bolivians in this northern region live off trade and interaction with Brazil. Moses calls for the borders to be closed to help save lives.
“I think now is the time for the authorities to forget about politics and everything, we have to be tough because you can’t do politics if everyone is dead,” he said.
DRASTIC RESTRICTIONS
Feeding the deadly outbreak in Brazil is a more contagious variant of the new coronavirus, known as P1, which appeared in the northern region of the Amazon near the end of 2020 and now predominates in much of the country. Early studies suggest that it may outperform some antibodies and increase a person’s chances of reinfection.
The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), the regional arm of the World Health Organization, said on Tuesday that the P1 variant was detected in 15 countries in the Americas and is a major cause for concern.
In Argentina, which has been reluctant to close the borders with Brazil, its main trading partner, calls for stricter rules are getting louder from scientists and regional leaders.
At a video meeting on Monday between the Interior Minister, health officials and regional governors, participants discussed possible measures, including strengthening border security forces, with a focus on areas close to Brazil, Paraguay and Bolivia, said a government source familiar with the process.
Also under discussion is the possibility of speeding up the vaccination of border personnel, tightening the rules for truckers who carry cargo across the border and cracking down on travelers, including Argentines, coming from Brazil.
“Work is being done to severely restrict the entry of Brazil with drastic restrictions on the frequency of flights from the neighboring country,” said a government source on Tuesday, who said that restrictive measures will be defined in the coming days.
Guzzi, the Argentine infectious disease specialist, is among the health experts who call for the closure of borders, restrictions on coming from Brazil or periods of mandatory confinement.
“What happens with Brazil has a very important impact on what happens in our national territory,” she told Reuters. “If this variant (P1) is established in Argentina, it can be very dangerous.”
In Uruguay, a popular tourist destination for Brazilians, hospitals in towns and cities close to the border with Brazil are reaching saturation levels and running out of beds.
Before the best performance in Latin America in containing the virus, Uruguay is now seeing cases soar. The country’s average daily rate of infection per capita, around 50 cases per 100,000, now exceeds the Brazilian rate, by 35 per 100,000, according to confirmed case data.
In Montevideo, health officials last week launched a working group of experts to analyze test samples to help track the entry of new variants, including P1. Uruguayan authorities confirmed that they detected the Brazilian variants P1 and P2 for the first time on Monday.
“The alarm is ringing,” said Julio Pontet, president of the Uruguayan Society of Intensive Care. He said that the increase in COVID-19 cases in the northeastern region of Uruguay, on the border with Brazil, was much worse than elsewhere.
‘RED MARCH’
Brazil, meanwhile, is on its way to its worst month in the pandemic, with more than 40,000 deaths in what some local newspapers have called the “red march”. Intensive care units in some cities are overloaded and medicine shortages.
Bolsonaro, who refused the coronavirus vaccine, opposes the closure of companies and measures of social distance. Several state governors, who tightened restrictions last year, have done so again in recent weeks, despite the president’s protests. Brazilian companies have also started to demand firmer actions, with some, like the automaker Volkswagen AG, interrupting operations.
Many countries, however, remain reluctant to isolate themselves completely from Brazil, Latin America’s main economy.
And PAHO, while concerned about Brazil’s impact on the region, suggested that the complete closure of borders was not the answer.
Jarbas Barbosa, Deputy Director of PAHO, told Reuters that strong public health measures, such as wearing a mask, physical distance, better surveillance and blocking when necessary, remain the best hope for preventing further spread.
In Paraguay, however, local officials say that their country is at risk as long as neighboring Brazil remains a vector of the coronavirus.
“We always say that when Brazil sneezes, Paraguay gets a cold,” said Guillermo Sequera, director of health surveillance at the country’s Ministry of Health.
(Reporting by Fabian Werner in Montevideo, Agustin Geist in Buenos Aires, Daniela Desantis in Asunción, Daniel Ramos in La Paz; additional reporting by Julia Symmes Cobb in Bogotá, Marco Aquino in Lima, Pedro Fonseca in Rio de Janeiro, Anthony Boadle in Brasília , Marta Lopez in Buenos Aires, Aislinn Laing in Santiago and Luc Cohen in Caracas; written by Adam Jourdan; edited by Adam Jourdan and Marla Dickerson)