The International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) most recent Regional Economic Outlook excerpts which were reported in several Caribbean territories over last weekend have asserted that Latin America and the Caribbean have suffered considerably more than other regions, in both human and economic terms on account of the still raging COVID-19 pandemic.
While the hemisphere has only 8.2% of the global population, it was dealing with 28% of the COVID-19 cases and 34% of the deaths by September, the Fund informs.
Asserting that the impact of COVID-19 on the hemisphere was accentuated by some of the region’s “structural characteristics,” the IMF notes, first, that comparatively more people work in activities that require close physical proximity while fewer people have jobs in which teleworking is feasible.