COVID-19 Pandemic in Latin America

Question for Short Debate

Asked by

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in Latin America.

My Lords, Latin America accounts for 8.2% of global population but has experienced a disproportionate 20% of Covid infections and a third of global deaths. The response to Covid has varied enormously within Latin America. In Brazil, the laissez-faire attitude of the Government left everything to a devolved health system, and they actively refused to take any central responsibility or leadership, with President Bolsonaro dismissing Covid as just “a little flu”. This has resulted in Brazil suffering the worst rates of death and infection in the whole of Latin America.

By contrast, Uruguay saw the most effective response by miles, ramping up the test, trace and track systems, avoiding lockdowns and school closures, and achieving some of the lowest infection and death figures in the world—although, during 2021, the beta variant from Brazil has now increased infection rates among young people in particular. I am aware that funding from the UK embassy in Montevideo has helped to fund genomic surveillance and public health monitoring. Is that funding still in place, and could it be replicated in other countries of the region? In El Salvador, the borders were closed quickly, and quarantine was enforced by the police and the military. Containment centres were also set up quickly but proved to be ineffective at infection control because shared accommodation became a vector for spreading the disease. In Panama, it was hoped that transmission rates would be reduced by allowing people out to pharmacies and supermarkets by sex: women one day and men the next. This has been monitored by Google tracking people’s phones. There are no reliable data on whether it was effective, although the infection rate appears to have declined.

But the Covid factor that is characteristic across the region is the way in which the pandemic has exacerbated existing inequalities. Corruption over the acquisition of ventilators has been notable in Bolivia. In Colombia, there was a 103% increase in domestic violence between March and December 2020. Some 21% of Latin America’s urban population live in slums, informal settlements or precarious housing, where overcrowding and the lack of services are some of the factors that help to spread disease. You cannot be two metres away from someone if your house is only two metres square and for multiple generations.

In Colombia and elsewhere there was already very limited access to healthcare and basic services such as clean drinking water and soap in poor and rural areas, making simple Covid measures such as handwashing very difficult, if not impossible. Similarly, in Peru, the pandemic has exposed chronic weaknesses in the public health system, especially in rural areas such as the Amazon region. The poorest in the population found it hardest to comply with lockdown and social distancing because they rely on daily wages in the informal economy and could not afford not to work, even if they risked infection or knew they were infected. These pressures fall most heavily on women, indigenous peoples, Afro-Colombians and peasant farmers. The number of Colombians living in extreme poverty grew by 3.5 million in 2020 alone, and the UN added Colombia to its list of so-called hunger hotspots.

My Lords, I thank and congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, on securing this important debate on Latin America, which is of great interest to many across the House for a variety of reasons. As she said, Latin America has just 8.2% of the world’s population, but by February 2021 had recorded more than 650,000 deaths—more than one-quarter of the world total. I think we can be sure that the attitude of and policies pursued by Jair Bolsonaro have been responsible for the huge number of deaths in Brazil. In general, the pandemic has highlighted the inadequacy of public health systems and severe inequality in Latin American society—an aspect of the Covid pandemic in evidence, in terms of equality, in the UK as well, alas. One of the outcomes among Latin American nations may be that higher social spending on health and so on will be called for, which would be no bad thing.

Colombia reacted reasonably quickly in the initial stages of the pandemic, but prolonged lockdown eventually led to a falling away of compliance as people needed to work, as the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, said. In fact, many people have now lost gainful employment. Against the background of a high level of human rights abuses and serious opposition to proposed tax reforms, which would further entrench inequality, many Colombians have faced considerable harm at the hands of state forces in addition to the harm they faced from the pandemic. Armed groups have clearly taken advantage of the lockdown to wreak havoc in communities, with the UN observing huge increases in massacres, which were already all too common in Colombia.

It takes an enormous amount of courage to be a human rights defender, or even an active trade unionist, particularly a teacher trade unionist, in Colombia. The UN mission has called the number of deaths of human rights defenders an epidemic of violence, with 177 individuals killed in 2020. With what we hope will be the gradual subsiding of the pandemic, the focus must return to high-profile condemnation of the violence of the Colombian police and paramilitaries. Will the Minister ensure that Her Majesty’s Government will continue to call for full implementation of the peace process?

My Lords, as the noble Lords, Lord Bethell and Lord Hannan of Kingsclere, have withdrawn, I now call the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley.

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, as I, like others this evening, have an affinity with Latin America.

The situation is dire, which is supported by a depressing collection of facts and numbers. The pandemic has had a devastating social impact. Poverty—and extreme poverty, as has been mentioned—has dramatically increased, with inequality having grown throughout the region. The only question I can muster is: what is we can we do to help?

While international trade contracted globally in 2020, it contracted more severely in Latin America. The only light at the end of the tunnel is that there has been a more considerable drop in imports than exports, which has reduced the region’s trade deficit. However, the prospects for recovery are not good. Companies are recording significant losses as commodity prices fall. Generally, exports have fallen by 10% and imports by 13%. Unemployment has risen and businesses have been closed. Public accounts have deteriorated. The pandemic has caused the closure of a staggering 2.7 million Latin American companies, equating to 19% of all companies in Latin America.

The differences between the countries are high. Peru, Argentina, Ecuador, Panama, El Salvador, Mexico and Colombia have been the most affected countries, with small businesses and low-skilled workers struggling the hardest. It would be inappropriate not to record that a staggering 600,000 Brazilians, including a disproportionate number of indigenous citizens, have perished. Venezuela has felt the effects of a break in its relationship with Cuba, with doctors emigrating. Women and the youth are among the most affected.

The majority of countries have established instruments of direct help to households, such as the emergency family income in Argentina, the Covid-19 voucher in Chile, the solidarity income in Colombia, the proteger voucher in Costa Rica and the emergency voucher in Brazil. Some countries have been able to take advantage of the boost in their exports of medical and agricultural products. Guatemala and Honduras have benefited from the sales of masks and Costa Rica from those of medical equipment, mainly destined for the United States market.

The all-important remittances from Latin American workers outside the region fell by 19.3% in 2020, according to the World Bank. These incomes are particularly important in Central America. The worsening environment for migrants during the pandemic means that their basic needs are unmet and their social and economic capabilities not realised. In short, Covid-19 has illustrated the urgent need to support the impoverished with aid from overseas.

My Lords, in thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, for her perseverance in getting a time slot for this debate, I also support all she said about the prevalence, consequences and challenges posed by the pandemic throughout Latin America. She underlined in particular the social and security aspects. I agree not only with her, but with the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, that the overall picture is dire and depressing.

In my three minutes, I would like to refer in particular to the three countries with which I am engaged as a trade envoy, namely Panama, Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic. I was appointed just before lockdown. Inevitably, Covid and the restrictions of lockdown have affected any attempts to embark on promotional trade activities in both directions. It is only very recently that Costa Rica has come off the red list of countries which we cannot visit and from which we cannot receive visitors. It came off the list with two other Central American countries, Honduras and Guatemala. The three countries are very preoccupied with the issue of the red list.

Tourism, of course, is vital to the economies of these three countries and to wider Latin America. In particular, eco-tourism is vital to Costa Rica. As the Minister well knows, Costa Rica is recognised as the greenest economy of the region, and of the whole of Latin America, so it is of the utmost importance to facilitate travel as soon as possible, not only for the Costa Rican economy but to support travel operators in this country, many of which are small and medium-sized businesses specialising in areas such as eco-tourism.

The latest figures I have from Costa Rica show that 70% of the population have had one dose of the vaccine and 40% have had two doses. The figures vary slightly—those I received from the Library are slightly different. However, those are quite impressive figures and perhaps account for the fact that Costa Rica was removed from the red list. I should also mention that AstraZeneca opened its new headquarters for the whole region in Costa Rica last year—a very important link.

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, for securing this important debate. As we consider the devastating consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic in Latin America, it is important to bear in mind that, due to deeply ingrained cultural attitudes, some are better placed to cope than others.

Gender discrimination affects women and girls and, as in most other parts of the world, widows in particular face additional hurdles. Rural widows who find themselves left alone to fend for their families are often not permitted to take over livelihoods due to the highly gendered nature of farm work and agricultural supply chains. In Colombia, for example, the arrangements for allocating the property of an intestate husband do not in practice allow for the widow maintaining control of the family farm or business—that is, providing for their own economic autonomy.

There are examples in parts of Latin America of disinheritance, whereby widows are prevented by male relatives from inheriting property to which they are legally entitled. Widows’ circumstances put them at high risk of poverty and additional acute direct threats to their well-being.

As regards any support we are able to provide, whether in vaccine distribution or other overseas development aid, can the Minister give an assurance that the Government will take these underlying inequalities into account to make sure that support is targeted first at the most vulnerable?

My Lords, I thank and congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, and echo all that she has said this evening. She gave an excellent speech and I congratulate her on getting the time available to speak on this important subject. There is all too little focus on the huge impact Covid has had on South America and, as the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, said, on the dire situation it has created, not least among women and the youth, who have been very badly affected because of the inequalities that have grown in those societies.

I talked to somebody who worked for a good while with Goni Sánchez de Lozada, when he was President of Bolivia, on social and economic policies and development programmes in his country.

I have to be brief this evening, although I note that the Clock has not started yet. I want to pick up on what the noble Baroness, Lady Blower, said. She highlighted that the pandemic highlights public health systems and that funding should concentrate on public health systems. I just want very briefly, in a minute, to state that I hope that when it comes to recovery programmes, the Government will prioritise public health support in Latin America. That extends beyond many of the points that the noble Baroness wisely raised and I hope were well heard by the Government.

Noble Lords will not be surprised to hear that I believe that sport, recreation and active lifestyles can help very much in recovery programmes. They can go to the heart of good health and well-being, quality education, gender equality—which is critical in any recovery programme—decent work opportunities, growth and reducing the inequalities which the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, rightly spoke about.

It was interesting that, in the build-up to the Olympic Games in Tokyo, the IOC, through the UN, encouraged all member states to include sport and physical activity in their recovery programmes from Covid-19; to integrate sport and physical activity into national strategies for sustainable development, taking note of the contributions sport, physical activity and an active lifestyle make to health; and to promote safe sport as a contributor to the health and well-being of individuals and communities.

My Lords, to reassure the Government Whip, I will not seek to take advantage of the flexibility on timings this evening. I commend the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins—I consider her my noble friend—for securing this debate and introducing it so well. She has a very consistent and strong interest in this region. As the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, indicated, this is an area which is debated far too infrequently in this House.

The world saw a differing approach to a global pandemic in that region, with politics over health, open boundaries and borders and minimal economic assistance, even when this was fiscally possible. I watched President Bolsonaro’s speech at UNGA with an element of horror, and I note the legal challenges that he now faces in his own country.

Information today from Our World in Data shows that his approach has seen 604,000 people die in Brazil, with deaths likely to be underreported. In Mexico, there have been 285,000 deaths; in Peru, there have been 200,000. Peru has had 6,000 deaths per million people of its population, compared with 752 in Canada. Perhaps the most startling figure I read was that, while the UK has seen a horrific 11% of excess deaths during the pandemic, Mexico has had 40%, Ecuador 49% and Peru an astonishing 93%.

The vaccination rollout has also been patchy. Data from today interestingly shows a full vaccination rate for Uruguay and Chile—higher than in the UK—but Brazil has only half of its population vaccinated and Peru 42.4%. The impact on that country has been enormous. The noble Baroness, Lady Hooper—whom I also consider a noble friend—and I visited there together and have both made many calls for greater UK interest in that country since the visit.

The noble Lord, Lord Browne, who had hoped to speak this evening, was in touch with the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, and myself. We all share a concern over the ongoing economic impact. At the end of last year, an estimated 231 million people in Latin America were living in poverty, the worst level for 15 years. Data from a World Bank report published on 8 June this year forecast how countries would return to pre-pandemic levels, if at all, by 2022. It suggested that advanced economies would be 0.1% smaller, but medium-income countries would be 4.1% smaller.

My Lords, I too would like to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, for initiating this debate. We are looking at a tale of two worlds here. In the first week of August, 85 million Covid vaccines had been administered in the United Kingdom. In Paraguay, the situation could not have been more different. The President of Paraguay addressed the nation amidst frustration that only 4% had been vaccinated. He told his people in simple terms, “We bet on COVAX mechanisms and COVAX did not work”. I hope the Minister will say something about that.

Two months on, the figure in Paraguay has risen from 4% to 26%. A night-time curfew remains in place and those who have received vaccinations are crediting China for Sinovac and Russia for Sputnik V, as the noble Baroness said.

Latin America has been especially hard-hit by Covid-19. It has 8% of the world’s population but over 16% of global cases in the top six countries alone and, except for Chile, the highest number of deaths. Reasons include poor health infrastructure, the inability of workers in the informal economy to self-isolate and the lack of decisive, co-ordinated government action.

The ILO estimated that, by the end of 2020, employment across the region had fallen from 57% to 52%. It also illustrated how women and young people had been adversely affected, describing the results as

“a time bomb that could affect social and political stability”.

Here I highlight the point made by my noble friend Lady Blower on the impact on the peace process, particularly in Colombia. Will the Minister tell us a bit more about how we are influencing the situation there, to ensure that the peace process is kept on track?

I hope the Minister will also address the issue of the global vaccination effort and what we are doing to ensure that we donate surplus doses, as well as develop a co-ordinated investment programme for new facilities.