COVID-19 pandemic swept through the Americas in 2020

January 25, 2021

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PAHO helps international locations cope as extra than 35 million of us are infected and 850,000 die.

Washington, D.C., December 30, 2020 (PAHO)—The COVID-19 pandemic swept through every country in the Americas in 2020, infecting extra than 35 million of us and causing some 850,000 deaths. Globally, COVID-19 affected 216 international locations and territories, causing extra than 80 million instances and 1.7 million deaths worldwide. The Americas became the most affected continent in a context of dapper inequities.

Pan American Health Group Director Carissa F. Etienne known because it “the most extraordinary public effectively being event of our lifetimes,” and acknowledged the work to govern the pandemic in 2021 “won’t be straightforward or speedy.”

In a year-discontinuance message, Etienne acknowledged, “As we means the discontinuance of 2020, I would adore to acknowledge your dedication in meeting the unparalleled challenges of this year. My thanks to all staff, nationwide governments, international organizations, and residents who’ve helped confront COVID-19 while continuing to map the effectively being and effectively-being of of us in the Impart of the Americas.”

At the begin of the pandemic, PAHO activated a company-broad response through regional and country incident management system groups. The Group labored with international locations to present a have interaction to their surveillance, testing and laboratory skill; and put together and strengthen effectively being care products and services, infection prevention pick an eye on, clinical management, and risk communique.

PAHO interested in helping international locations snappily detect instances, provide protection to their health workers, decrease transmission, and set lives, providing training, logistical give a have interaction to, major equipment and presents, and emergency planning.

To enhance PAHO sources in 27 country locations of work, personnel and presents have been mobilized to train nationwide effectively being authorities, give a have interaction to nationwide emergency plans, and assess reorganization of effectively being products and services. PAHO moreover disseminated technical specifications for non-public protecting equipment (PPE) and biomedical equipment and supported the diagnosis of needs to meet the requirements for PPE, presents, and reagents and developed purchasing processes to generate a strategic nationwide reserve through donations to the PAHO Strategic Fund, a regional technical cooperation mechanism for pooled procurement of foremost medicines and strategic effectively being presents. Moreover, over 200 virtual training courses have been held, with some 30,000 contributors from 33 international locations.

Contact tracing is excessive for effectively being authorities to make a selection the spread of the virus under pick an eye on. In collaboration with the Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network–GOARN, PAHO trained health workers in 31 international locations and territories in the Shuffle.Information app. The app supports investigation and management of suspected COVID-19 instances, notify of transmission chains, and pick up in touch with tracing.

The international scientific community raced to call and assess the efficacy of attainable therapeutics for caring for persons sickened by COVID-19. To assist international locations navigate the deluge of information, PAHO reviewed findings from over 1,700 clinical trials and 58 therapeutic alternatives to enable effectively being authorities to find proof-backed selections for patient care. In addition, 111 technical guidelines and suggestions have been developed or tailored to the Americas from WHO paperwork.

PAHO moreover supported strengthening or installation of SARS-CoV-2 virus reference laboratory diagnostic skill in 35 international locations and territories and established a regional genomics surveillance community to computer screen for variants of the virus.

“While we hope 2021 will usher a brand contemporary chapter in our fight against this virus, protecting the thousands and thousands of of us in our blueprint with COVID-19 vaccines will most certainly be a immense undertaking,” Etienne acknowledged in a most trendy briefing. “So, we ought to wait and see and remain life like that COVID-19 will most certainly be among us for some time – so our work to govern it cannot and must never discontinuance.” Susceptible of us in the Americas “are already receiving COVID-19 vaccines, with thousands and thousands extra doses anticipated early next year. This timeline is astonishing and a testament to the unprecedented collaboration among scientists, researchers and consultants alike.”

Global partnerships adore the COVAX Facility are moreover pooling sources, abilities and efforts to make a selection up certain that international locations have equal entry to safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines under the same timelines Etienne added. PAHO’s Revolving Fund, through which 41 international locations and territories pool their sources to obtain fine quality vaccines, syringes and linked presents for their populations at the lowest designate, will moreover play a famous intention.