Covid-19 in Latin America Conference Call
Covid-19 also refereed to as “the corona virus”, is a flu like virus that originated in China, and has now turned into a pandemic after spreading to every continent in the world except Antarctica. Although Latin America has fewer cases than Europe and Asia it will still be affected greatly from the spread of the virus. At this moment it is impossible to determine how badly the impact will be, because we don’t know how long this pandemic will last. However, the impact on China, the US, and Europe will directly affect the economies in Latin America.
What I learned from this conference call is that Latin America may potentially have a disastrous outcome from the corona virus pandemic if it continues to spread. Especially in Latin America, due to large poverty rates and a poor health care system, if Corona virus increases, countries will have trouble providing poor people with the health care they need while the upper class with private health care will be protected. There are an average of 2.2 hospital beds per 1,000 people in Latin American countries compared to the 5 per 1,000 that Europe has and only 1 per 1,000 that Mexico has. This means that if Latin America gets hit anywhere near as hard as Europe, they will run out of beds and medical equipment such as ventilators very quickly and will need aid from the international community. Experts are saying that this probably won’t happen due low rates of Corona virus, however a huge economic impact is much more probable.
The most likely form of economic impact would be a drop in export prices of about 10% or more due to a decrease in demand from China, the U.S and Europe whose economies will be affected. Another problem will be unemployment as businesses may collapses due to the internal demand shock, which would then increase already high poverty rates. In the end, Latin America will be affected greatly or little depending on how the rest of the world is affected (which we really can’t predict accurately). Hopefully infection rates will start to slow down and we will see the global economy bounce back quickly and efficiently. On the other hand, this pandemic could continue through the summer, which will have a devastating impact on the entire world and subsequently, Latin America.
