Latin America is the region hit hardest by the pandemic.

The first confirmed case of coronavirus in Latin America was identified in Brazil at the end of February, since then, the virus has spread all over the region causing more than 10.9 million infected people and more than 390 thousand deaths, making it the most affected region by the pandemic in the world.

The evolution of Covid-19 in Latin American countries has been heterogeneous in recent weeks. Some countries registered a decrease in infections and deaths (Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Haiti, Nicaragua), while others experienced an increase in these indicators (Argentina, Costa Rica, Paraguay), finally, some of them seems to be in a prolonged plateau or do not show a clear tendency (Brazil, Cuba, Honduras, México, Peru, Uruguay).

However, even in those countries which experienced a slowdown in virus propagation, this does not seem to respond to herd immunity, because if that were the case, the mortality rate per million people will tend to stabilize at about the same level in all countries (assuming similar basic reproduction numbers), but this is not what the data shows.

On the contrary, it seems that discrepancies observed between countries in terms of the number of deaths are explained by differences in rigorousness of interventions, the moment in which they were imposed, and the protection measures that people has adopted in the “new normal.” This means that there are still a large number of people susceptible to contracting the disease, and there is still a high risk of renewed transmission as interventions or behavior are relaxed.