Pan American Health Organization: New COVID variants in 20 countries; women disproportionately affected

By Aaron Humes: Director of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), Carissa F. Etienne, warned that the health, social and economic effects of COVID-19 are disproportionately impacting women and called for heightened attention to the pandemic’s gender disparities.

The trend of men being more likely to fall ill with COVID-19 seen at the start of the pandemic has been reversing: women are now equally likely to develop the disease, and the majority of them are health workers. Also, services for women including gender violence hotlines and sexual and reproductive health services have taken a backseat.

More than one million health workers in the Americas have become ill with COVID-19 and 4,000 health workers, most of them women, have died. Women have also been impacted economically with job losses as a result of caring for their families, impacting income and well-being, and the spectre of domestic violence makes their home unsafe.

Addressing the new variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19, Etienne reported that three new variants have been detected in 20 countries in the Americas, though their frequency is still limited. The variants have raised concerns about possible heightened transmission.

Etienne also updated the pandemic’s toll on the region. In the past week, more than 1.8 million people in the Americas became sick with COVID-19 and more than 47,000 died. In North America, COVID-19 infections are decreasing in the U.S. and Canada while in Mexico, cases and deaths continue to increase.

In Central America, Guatemala and Honduras are continuing to report a rise in COVID-19 infections. Across the Caribbean, most nations are seeing a reprieve in infections, although larger islands such as the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Puerto Rico and Cuba continue to drive new infections. Nearly every country in South America has reported a rise in COVID-19 infections over the last week.

“Today we’re seeing that cities, provinces, and countries that had previously managed to control COVID-19 outbreaks are seeing a sometimes-devastating resurgence in cases in our region and beyond,” Etienne said. “This should serve as a lesson that keeping the virus at bay is not a one-time effort, but a constant commitment while transmission is still active.”

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