Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva attended this week the laying of the foundation stone for the Orion Project, a laboratory complex specialized in disease-causing pathogens such as viruses, bacteria, and parasites to be built in Campinas, in the State of São Paulo. According to Agencia Brasil, the facility is expected to be the most advanced in Latin America and one of the most important in the world.
US President Joseph Biden said during a TV interview aired late Sunday that the COVID-19 pandemic was over. “We still have a problem with COVID. We’re still doing a lot of work on it. But the pandemic is over,” Biden said, thus sparking a series of uproars from within scientific and politician communities.
In the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, the global prevalence of anxiety and depression increased by a massive 25%, according to a scientific brief released by the World Health Organization (WHO). The brief also highlights who has been most affected and summarizes the effect of the pandemic on the availability of mental health services and how this has changed during the pandemic.
Rio de Janeiro’s street carnival parades may be off but other parts of South America are returning to their traditional celebrations following a ban during 2021 as a result of COVID-19 measures.
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro Wednesday said the Omicron variant of the SARS-CoV-2 was “welcome” in Brazil, because it “may point to the end of the pandemic.”
Unemployment in Chile is down to 7,5%, the lowest since January 2020, according to the country's stats office INAE. The 7,5% figure is the seventh consecutive mobile quarter, (September-November), which has seen a systematic reduction in unemployment plus a simultaneous standing recovery of lost jobs, some 74,6% of the two million wiped out by the coronavirus pandemic.
Uruguayan COVID-19 expert Rafael Radi, a former coordinator of the Honorary Scientific Advisory Group (GACH), has said in an interview that eliminating the second PCR test for those arriving into his country was a “somewhat bold” measure he would have not recommended.
By Edouard Wemy – Tapering refers to the Federal Reserve policy of unwinding the massive purchases of Treasury bonds and mortgage-backed securities it’s been making to shore up the economy during the pandemic.
Paraguayan authorities have decided to cut down the Value Added Tax (VAT) by 1% until March 2022 in a move to boost across-the-border trade. The measure applies to goods imported through the so-called Tourism Regime and includes beverages and perfumes.
Analysts foresee official data for the year 2021 will show an increase in poverty for the second straight year in Paraguay and will reach almost 30% due mainly to increasing inflation, analysts said Tuesday.