Why Uruguay Lost Control of COVID scientificamerican.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from scientificamerican.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
“We were a model in 2020,” says Rafael Radi, a biochemist at the University of the Republic in Montevideo. “Unfortunately, things are not following the same path in 2021.”
By Luke Taylor – Complacency and a coronavirus variant help to explain why Uruguay, once a pandemic success story, couldn’t withstand the surge now rocking South America.
Once looked to as a global model for how to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, Uruguay has in recent months lost its grip on the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. It’s now one of several countries in South America struggling to control a wave of infections.
Uruguayan scientists say a mix of complacency fuelled by the country’s early success at controlling the virus and the challenges posed by a particularly transmissible SARS-CoV-2 variant are to blame.