Patterns of responses to COVID-19 in selected Latin American countries

Abstract

The article analyses structural and context constraints and opportunities faced by Latin America in the battle against the Covid-19 pandemic. We argue that the number of deaths (and related statistics, such as number of infected or number of tests) as a proportion of the countries’ populations is an important but insufficient measure of the effectiveness of each country’s responses to the SARS-CoV-2. We test the correlation of deaths with typical structural constraints (Gross domestic product, United Nation – Human Development Index, Gini index, expenditure in health, children’s mortality rate, informality rate), and find that between countries’ differences in these measures do not help to understand the number of deaths per million inhabitants. We then move to a more in-depth analysis of 11 selected Latin American countries to show that those that chose collective responsibility (a notion developed in the article) in the management of the responses to the crisis, and that could coordinate the actions of different governing levels, fared much better than those that chose individual responsibility and low levels of coordination, irrespective of existing structural constraints.