The Americas are now ‘centre’ of coronavirus pandemic, WHO warns

‘Now is not the time for countries to ease restrictions,’ official says

The Americas have become the new epicentre of the coronavirus pandemic, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has said

Covid-19 numbers have also been accelerating in Peru, Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua.

The United States — which has seen the largest number of infections in the world at around 1.69 million — recently shut off travel from Brazil after the South American country emerged as a coronavirus hotspot.

“Now is not the time for countries to ease restrictions,” Dr Carissa Etienne, WHO director for the Americas and head of the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO), said on Tuesday.

“Our region has become the epicentre of the Covid-19 pandemic,” she said on a videoconference.

Other PAHO directors warned there are “very tough” weeks ahead for the region, and said Brazil — which has the second-largest number of infections in the world — has a long way to go before it will see the pandemic end.

Jair Bolsonaro, the Brazilian president, has raged against local shutdowns aimed at stopping the spread of the virus despite warnings that the outbreak is deepening.

The WHO’s comments came the day after Brazil saw the world’s highest daily death rate for the disease for the first time and the US imposed a travel ban on people coming from the South American country.

The White House said it aimed to prevent additional infections in the US with the measure, which stops anyone who has been to Brazil in the two weeks prior from entering the country.

As Brazil’s daily death rate soared on Monday, when it emerged more than 800 people had died in a 24-hour period, a University of Washington study warned that the country’s total number of fatalities could climb to 125,000 by early August.

The forecast from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the university came with a call for lockdowns that Brazil’s right-wing president has resisted.

The current data predict the total number of Covid-19 deaths in Peru could reach nearly 20,000 by August, IHME said.

Elsewhere, deaths could rise to nearly 12,000 in Chile, 7,000 in Mexico, 6,000 in Ecuador, 5,500 in Argentina and to 4,500 in Colombia by the same month.

One country in the region doing relatively well against coronavirus is Cuba, where the IHME forecasts a death toll of just 82 by August while testing continues to outpace the outbreak.

More than 5.6 million people have been infected with coronavirus in the world to date.

Meanwhile, the global death toll stood at around 350,000 on Wednesday.

Additional reporting by agencies