ReliefWeb

KEY FIGURES

7.7M CONFIRMED COVID-19 CASES IN LATIN AMERICA & THE CARIBBEAN AS OF 6 SEPTEMBER

REGIONAL: COVID-19

Cases are referenced from PAHO/WHO 6 September COVID-19 Report - https://bit.ly/2O25YQw

As of 6 September, PAHO/WHO reports 7,797,853 cases and 290,167 deaths in Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as 5,992,260 recovered cases.

KEY FIGURES

$400M IN CABEI FINANCING TO PURCHASE COVID-19 VACCINES FOR CENTRAL AMERICA

LATIN AMERICA: COVID-19

CENTRAL AMERICA & MEXICO

The Central American Bank for Economic Integration (CABEI) approved US$400 million in financing to purchase COVID-19 vaccines for the region upon availability. The allocation will be split into $50 million packages for bank member countries Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama and the Dominican Republic.

The allocation is part of CABEI’s $2.3 billion COVID-19 emergency support and preparation and economic reactivation programme.

SOUTH AMERICA

OCHA published a COVID-19 Action Plan for the Amazon area between Brazil, Colombia and Peru to address urgent needs along their shared border. The plan covers an area home to some 208,600 people, 57 per cent of whom are indigenous, living in places with higher fatality rates than national rates. The disproportionate impact owes in part to poor access to basic services and structural poverty rates as high as 80 per cent in some communities. The Triple Border is the most remote area for the three countries and where response capacities have traditionally been limited.

KEY FIGURES

23.3% QUARTERLY CONTRACTION IN BELIZE'S ECONOMY DUE TO COVID-19 CRISIS

CARIBBEAN: COVID-19

ECONOMIC IMPACT

Belize's economy declined by 23.3 per cent between April and June 2020 compared to the same period in 2019. The US$169.9 million decline marked Belize’s fifth consecutive quarterly economic contraction and is their largest decline to date. The COVID-19 crisis has hit the services sector, which accounts for almost two-thirds of the economy, harder than any other sector.

Similarly, the Dominican Republic's Central Bank reports that GDP shrank by 8.5 per cent between January and June 2020 compared to the first half of 2019. Prior to the COVID-19 crisis, the economy was growing at about five per cent, following consecutive years of growth averaging 6 per cent since 2010. The most affected sectors have been hotels, bars and restaurants, who have seen 43.3 per cent drop, and construction with a 19.5 per cent drop.

CUBA

Cuban authorities ordered another a 15-day lockdown on 1 September to control the low-level but persistent increase of COVID-19 cases in the country's capital, including two new community transmission hotspots.