The Social and Economic Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic in Latin America

Abstract

During its history, humanity has had to face, research, and overcome innumerable infectious diseases, many of them in the range of epidemic and pandemic. There exist data about multiple influenza epidemics, such as the one that spread through Mesopotamia and South Asia around 1200 BC, until the influenza (flu) pandemic in 1889 and 1890. Also about diverse epidemics of bubonic plague produced by the pathogen Yersinia pestis, such as the Justinian plague (541-542), which originated in the Roman Empire and spread in Europe and East Asia, the Black Death (1346-1356), the Russian plague (1770-1772), among other epidemics of this pathogen that spread to various cities in Europe, Africa, and North America during the 16th and 17th centuries. There have been records about smallpox epidemics, such as those in Japan (735-737) and Tenochtitlán (1519-1520); the salmonella epidemic of Cocolitzli (1545-1548) in the Viceroyalty of New Spain; yellow fever (1793-1794) that spread through Philadelphia; cholera pandemics such as the one in India (1817-1824) and in Asia, Europe, and North America (1852-1860); the pandemic known as the Spanish flu (1918-1920) and the swine flu (2009-2010), both produced by the influenza virus A-H1N1; the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) pandemic, produced by HIV (1981). Finally, throughout the 20th century, we have witnessed some new epidemics such as the Ebola (2014-2016), dengue (2002-2001), Zika (2015-2016) and COVID-19 flu outbreaks, caused by the pathogen SARS-CoV-2 (2019-2020). And many more others documented by historians and epidemiologists around the world (SerranoCumplido et al., 2020). (...)