Yahoo! News by way of AFP reports that COVID-19 cases have exploded across Latin America with total case numbers approaching 400,000.
Surging fatalities in Latin America helped push the global coronavirus death toll above 400,000 on Sunday, even as Europe emerged from its virus lockdown with infections increasingly under control there.
Pope Francis, addressing Catholics in Saint Peter’s Square on Sunday for the first time since the health emergency began, said the worst was over in Italy and expressed sympathy for those in hard-hit Latin American countries.
“Your presence in the square is a sign that in Italy the acute phase of the epidemic is over,” Francis said as the Vatican confirmed it had no more cases of COVID-19 among its employees or within Vatican City.
“Unfortunately in other countries — I am thinking of some of them — the virus continues to claim many victims.”
Brazil has the world’s third-highest toll — more than 36,000 dead — but President Jair Bolsonaro has criticized stay-at-home measures imposed by local officials and has threatened to leave the World Health Organization.
Tolls are also rising sharply in Mexico, Peru and Ecuador, while in Chile, total deaths have now reached 2,290. (source)
The worldwide “protests” may be biggest in public attention right now, but do not lose sight of COVID-19.
Diseases are like that. They stay quiet but still persist, and the threat from this has not diminished either.
The current predictions for the fall remain the same. Expect a return of COVID-19 cases potentially greater than before.