Coronavirus Outbreak – Paraguay and Uruguay Showed their Class to the World

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Brazil has been the epicenter of coronavirus pandemic for a while, with 868K cases and 43K deaths, trailing only the USA. The other South American countries like Peru, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia and Argentina have been hit hard and are experiencing huge surges. 

On the other hand, Paraguay and Uruguay, the two countries sharing borders with Brazil and Argentina, have seen minimal outbreaks. 

The reason is very simple: Culture. Despite being in South America, they are culturally quite different. Inherently, they are extremely law-abiding populations and the mitigation measures are somehow built into their culture. Also, those two governments were the first in South America to implement closures and lockdowns as early as in March itself. Conversely, Brazil's government was very slow to react. All of these positive factors along with low population densities have helped them fend off the outbreak quite effectively.      


Highlights...

1. The combined cases of Paraguay and Uruguay amount to 2,136, whereas their two landlocked neighbors, Brazil and Argentina, have 868K and 30K cases, respectively.   

2. Their combined death toll is only 34, paving the way for the lowest death rates and per capita deaths in the continent, while Brazil alone owns 43K deaths. 

3. They also have the lowest positivity rates in South America while all of their hard-hit counterparts have been struggling with double-digit rates. Brazil, Bolivia and Ecuador have some of the highest rates in the world.

4. Since their social measures have been effective enough to contain the spread, they didn't need much testing. In fact, their testing credentials are hardly any better than those of Brazil and Argentina.  

5. The Y-axis of Paraguay's daily cases summarizes the entire story. The Y ranges between 0 and 135 (and yes, it had several zero-case days and we are not talking about China). On only two occasions, its cases exceeded 100.

Paraguay and Uruguay have proven to the world how to fend off a pandemic as deadly as this and, therefore, the world must congratulate them on their marvelous achievement.

Stay safe!

Data Sources:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Paraguay

-Sid Som
homequant@gmail.com