Monthly Archives: February 2021

LIMA, Peru — When interim president Francisco Sagasti finally unveiled Peru's first coronavirus vaccine deal last month, Peruvians wearied by nearly a year of health and economic crises compounded by the country's recent political turmoil glimpsed a light at the end of the tunnel.  As ICU doctors and nurses this month began receiving their shots from the first batch — 300,000 doses from the Chinese company Sinopharm — cautious optimism began to spread. Sagasti said he hoped to have a third of Peru’s 32 million people vaccinated by the time he steps down on July 28. But…Read more …

 In the Brazilian jungle city of Manaus, thought to have achieved “herd immunity” during the first, crushing Covid-19 surge last year, exhausted gravediggers are once again burying the thousands of dead vertically, one on top of the other. In Peru, much of the country returned to lockdown on Sunday, with the Andean nation’s already overwhelmed public intensive care capacity of nearly 2,000 beds — a 10-fold increase on the pre-pandemic figure — not even expected to cover half the coming demand. In Mexico, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and the country’s richest man,…Read more …