Montevideo, Jan 14 (Prensa Latina) Uruguay registered today 10, 650 new Covid-19 cases, in another consecutive daily peak, with a total of 65, 655 active patients.
With recent surge, Uruguay battles to contain coronavirus
By GUILLERMO GARATJune 1, 2021 GMT
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay (AP) When Eduardo Rey celebrated his 69th birthday at home with 10 family members in Uruguay’s capital, he didn’t suspect it would start a mortal race to find medical care amid a surging pandemic
Two days after the party, the farmer came down with a fever, was coughing and felt weak. At first he and his family thought nothing of it, but then a relative who had been at the party tested positive for the coronavirus.
When Rey tested positive his family tried repeatedly to get help from a doctor on the public health care telephone, but they couldn’t get one to visit his home. His family eventually took him to a hospital themselves but they were told his lungs were badly damaged.
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“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.