The Pandemic Is Getting Worse in the Developing World

Annie Lowrey: The pandemic proved that cash payments work

The second factor has to do with the fact that many of the worst-affected countries in the developing world are also some of the most densely populated. In cities such as São Paulo and Delhi, where swathes of the population reside in multigenerational households within crowded and often unsanitary informal neighborhoods, social distancing is virtually impossible. For some, access to clean water and other basics isn’t a given. Even with the rollout of mass testing and contact tracing seen in some countries, Gedan noted, “if you cannot physically distance, then you cannot contain the spread of this virus.”

If there has been one silver lining, Barbosa said, it’s that the late arrival of the coronavirus to regions such as Latin America meant that many countries had time to shore up their health sectors. With some exceptions, he said, “we didn’t have in Latin America the situation that we saw in the north of Italy or in New York, where the services were totally overrun.” But a head start hasn’t made up for the fact that many health-care systems in the region lack sufficient resources, including life-saving medical equipment—a global issue that is perhaps most acute in Africa, where some countries have only a handful of ICU beds and ventilators. Some have none at all.

These issues weren’t a surprise to Matthew Richmond, a Brazil-based research fellow at the London School of Economics’ Latin America and Caribbean Centre. In mid-April, when Brazil had about 20,000 cases and just over 1,300 deaths, he warned that social and economic inequalities there would only exacerbate the situation. Speaking months later from his home in the southeast of the country, he told me his predictions have largely held up: Efforts to lock down have lapsed, and Brazil regularly records more than 1,000 deaths each day. Meanwhile, the government is pushing to reopen the country even as some of its most senior leaders, including Bolsonaro, have contracted the virus.

In countries and cities around the world, the pandemic has had an outsize impact on people of minority backgrounds and those from poorer communities elsewhere, and Richmond has observed the same dynamic play out in São Paulo. “Even though the cases were quite high in the wealthier areas, the deaths were much lower than in the poor areas,” he said. “And that’s not even taking into account the very high level of undercounting of cases and deaths.”

“There is certainly no sign that the situation is improving,” Richmond told me. “We get so used to seeing these terrible numbers and stories that [we’ve] become a bit desensitized to it.”

Yasmeen Serhan is a London-based staff writer at The Atlantic.