Venezuela registers the lowest case fatality rate in the American continent for Covid-19

“Currently, Venezuela has the lowest fatality rate in the American continent for the new Coronavirus (Covid-19), even though unfortunately ten Venezuelans have died in the national territory due to this disease”. This was highlighted by the Sector Vice-president for Communication, Culture and Tourism, Jorge Rodríguez, after a meeting of the Presidential Commission for the Prevention, Attention and Control of Covid-19, from the Miraflores Palace. He compared the number of cases and deaths, product of the disease, of nations of the continent with Venezuela, for every million inhabitants. To date, the United States has 259 deaths per million inhabitants; Ecuador 132; Peru 68.7; Brazil 66; Chile 19; Colombia 10; and Venezuela has 0.35 deaths for every million inhabitants. Regarding the number of cases, the United States registers 4,283 per million inhabitants; Peru 2,444; Chile 1,937; Ecuador 1,728; Brazil 154; Colombia 267; while Venezuela has 16 cases per million inhabitants. The exposed results -indicated Rodríguez- “will remain for current and future studies”, and show that “erratic, partial, timid measures cannot be taken into cosideration, the measures are more important than commerce and airlines, shopping centers and banks”. He added that “the measures that Venezuela took, by order of President Nicolás Maduro, at such close dates, have meant that we have managed to contain the spread of the virus”. When setting a hypothetical scenario, Rodríguez pointed out that if Venezuela had not taken the social and radical quarantine as assumed, there would be close to “(…) 380 thousand people who would be infected by this virus today, there would be more than 15 thousand deaths, 22 thousand people in Intensive Care Units (ICU) and the country’s health system would collapsed”, he said, noting that the scientific discussions that must take place must be based on scientific data and facts. If the measures are maintained in the country, “as we are going to maintain them”, Venezuela is going to “be well below what is called the flattened curve”, he said. Regarding those who call for a lifting of the quarantine, “for political purposes, not for scientific purposes, nor with the intention of caring for anyone”, he said that this would cause the curve, in less than a month, to increase by more than 300,000 cases of Covid-19.