By Julia Symmes Cobb
BOGOTA (Reuters) – The Americas are not behaving like a region experiencing an ever-graver outbreak of COVID-19, the director of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) said on Wednesday.
“Highly transmissible variants are spreading, and social distancing measures are not as strictly observed as before,” Director Carissa Etienne said during PAHO’s weekly press conference.
“We are not acting like a region in the midst of a worsening outbreak. More people have been infected with COVID in our region in the last seven days than most of the weekly case averages we saw last year. And our weekly deaths outnumber those of any week in 2020,” Etienne added.
(Reporting by Julia Symmes Cobb)
