Cases of Covid-19 in Latin America tripled from almost 690,000 on May 23 to more than 2 million as of yesterday, PAHO's director Dr. Carissa Etienne said Wednesday.
This week, Brazil has surpassed 1 million Covid-19 cases, joining the United States as the only other country in the world with cases in the seven digits, PAHO said. Mexico also rose to the fourth country with most cases in the continent. On Thursday, Colombia reported a new record high number of daily Covid-19 deaths.
There is now widespread transmission in most of Central America, while the Caribbean has hotspots on the border of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, as well as in northern South America, according to Etienne.
The 10 countries with the highest number of Covid-19 infections and deaths in Latin America are:
- Brazil: 1,228,114 cases, 54,971 deaths
- Peru: 268,602 cases, 8,761 deaths
- Chile: 259.064 cases, 4,903 deaths
- Mexico: 202,951 cases, 25,060 deaths
- Colombia: 80,599 cases, 2,654 deaths
- Ecuador: 53,156 cases, 4,343 deaths
- Argentina: 52,457 cases, 1,150 deaths
- Dominican Republic: 29,141 cases, 698 deaths (last updated on June 24)
- Panama: 29,037 cases, 564 deaths
- Bolivia: 28,503 cases, 913 deaths
Those figures current as of 6:00 a.m. ET today.
Nearly 400,000 people will die from Covid-19 in Latin America and the Caribbean by October, according to a new study released Thursday from The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington projects.