scholarly journals Faecal-oral transmission of SARS-CoV-2: a threat to Latin America?

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (7) ◽  
pp. 401-403
Author(s):  
Eder Cano Pérez ◽  
Jaison Torres-Pacheco ◽  
Génesis García-Díaz ◽  
María Carolina Fragozo-Ramos
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Potential Risk ◽  
Genetic Material ◽  
Mechanical Transmission ◽  
Viral Agent ◽  
Susceptible Host ◽  
Running Water ◽  
Oral Transmission

We are living in times when a viral pandemic has stopped normal life in much of the world. The new viral agent named Coronavirus 2 of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS-CoV-2), was found to be the cause of the so-called Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). This new coronavirus is closely related to other emerging zoonotic coronaviruses, such as the etiological agent of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS-CoV) and the Coronavirus related to the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS-CoV), which can cause disease severe in humans (1). Early symptoms in most COVID-19 patients include fever, dyspnea, cough, and sore throat, which can progress to pneumonia in severe cases. Other symptoms such as some gastrointestinal manifestations, including diarrhea, are less frequent (2). Respiratory droplets and contact transmission are considered the most important routes of transmission of COVID-19 but do not fully explain the occurrence of all cases and the rapid spread of this new virus (3). Recently, some studies have reported evidence of the presence of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in feces and wastewater, which raises the possibility of faecal-oral transmission of COVID-19. Some investigations have shown that the positivity of SARS-CoV-2 in the feces remains between 7 and 33 days after the samples of nasopharyngeal swabs were negative, increasing the possibility that the virus is transmitted through contaminated fomites (4, 5). Other studies have managed to isolate the virus present in the feces, determining the viability of the virus in these samples, showing the potential risk of faecal-oral contagion (3). Another associated intrinsic concern is the possibility of mechanical transmission of insect-mediated SARS-CoV-2. Vectors such as flies and cockroaches circulate in environments where feces are present and may carry viruses on their body and in their intestinal tract, contaminating surfaces (6). In recent months, studies have emerged where they detect the genetic material of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater (7). However, there is still no evidence of the viability of SARS-CoV-2 in these water sources. A study conducted on SARS-CoV during the outbreak in 2003 showed that the virus remains active in running water for 10 days at 23°C, while at low temperatures of 4°C the viability of the virus can reach up to 100 days. In wastewater, the viability of the virus decreases by 99.99% between 2-3 days at temperatures ~20°C and up to 14 days at 4°C (8). Considering the above, three possible environmental routes have been proposed for faecal-oral transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in humans from the feces. Within the main routes, it is found, the water, the surfaces, and the contact with the places where the vector insects circulate. From these environments, through different routes, viruses can reach the mouth and infect the intestinal and respiratory tracts of a susceptible host (9). To date, there have been no reports of humans contracting the SARS-CoV-2 virus through faecal-oral transmission, however, this possible mechanism itself represents a potential risk for the spread and transmission of COVID-19 in the Latin American context, considering that about 191 million people are living in poverty and 72 million in extreme poverty. This means that 30.8% of Latin Americans are poor, and 11.5% are extremely poor. This supposes that part of the population does not have the necessary resources such as food, drinking water, or managed sanitation (10). Additionally, disadvantaged people are more likely to live in overcrowded accommodation, with poor housing conditions, limited access to personal outdoor space, and overcrowding, factors that increase exposure to COVID-19. In conclusion, despite the need for more studies, if the "faecal-oral hypothesis" is confirmed as a transmission mechanism for COVID-19, it may result in far-reaching consequences for public health and pandemic control, especially in regions with fragile health systems such as Latin America, so studies are required to evaluate the influence of environmental factors on COVID-19 in the region.

scholarly journals SARS-CoV-2 in Rural Latin America. A Population-based Study in Coastal Ecuador

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oscar H Del Brutto ◽  
Aldo F Costa ◽  
Robertino M Mera ◽  
Bettsy Y Recalde ◽  
Javier A Bustos ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome ◽  
Clinical Manifestations ◽  
Population Based ◽  
Population Based Study ◽  
Oral Transmission

Abstract Antibodies to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) were detected in 303/673 rural Ecuadorian adults (45%), 77% of whom had compatible clinical manifestations. Seropositivity was associated with the use of open latrines. Our findings support the fears of mass spread of SARS-CoV-2 in rural Latin America and cannot exclude a contributing role for fecal-oral transmission.

Migration vs. development? The case of poverty and inequality in Mexico

2012 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Agustín Escobar Latapi
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
International Migration ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Opportunity Cost ◽  
Inequality Index ◽  
Poverty And Inequality ◽  
And Migration

Although the migration – development nexus is widely recognized as a complex one, it is generally thought that there is a relationship between poverty and emigration, and that remittances lessen inequality. On the basis of Latin American and Mexican data, this chapter intends to show that for Mexico, the exchange of migrants for remittances is among the lowest in Latin America, that extreme poor Mexicans don't migrate although the moderately poor do, that remittances have a small, non-significant impact on the most widely used inequality index of all households and a very large one on the inequality index of remittance-receiving households, and finally that, to Mexican households, the opportunity cost of international migration is higher than remittance income. In summary, there is a relationship between poverty and migration (and vice versa), but this relationship is far from linear, and in some respects may be a perverse one for Mexico and for Mexican households.

Palestinian Diaspora Communities in Latin America and Palestinian Statehood

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-120
Author(s):  
Yousef M. Aljamal ◽  
Philipp O. Amour
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
South America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Economic Life ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
The Political ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
Latin Americans ◽  
Political Views ◽  
The Right

There are some 700,000 Latin Americans of Palestinian origin, living in fourteen countries of South America. In particular, Palestinian diaspora communities have a considerable presence in Chile, Honduras, and El Salvador. Many members of these communities belong to the professional middle classes, a situation which enables them to play a prominent role in the political and economic life of their countries. The article explores the evolving attitudes of Latin American Palestinians towards the issue of Palestinian statehood. It shows the growing involvement of these communities in Palestinian affairs and their contribution in recent years towards the wide recognition of Palestinian rights — including the right to self-determination and statehood — in Latin America. But the political views of members of these communities also differ considerably about the form and substance of a Palestinian statehood and on the issue of a two-states versus one-state solution.

Sorting Out the Mixed Economy

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy C. Offner
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
New Deal ◽  
The United States ◽  
Business Associations ◽  
Welfare Programs ◽  
The Road ◽  
Social Welfare Programs ◽  
The Third World ◽  
The New Deal

In the years after 1945, a flood of U.S. advisors swept into Latin America with dreams of building a new economic order and lifting the Third World out of poverty. These businessmen, economists, community workers, and architects went south with the gospel of the New Deal on their lips, but Latin American realities soon revealed unexpected possibilities within the New Deal itself. In Colombia, Latin Americans and U.S. advisors ended up decentralizing the state, privatizing public functions, and launching austere social welfare programs. By the 1960s, they had remade the country's housing projects, river valleys, and universities. They had also generated new lessons for the United States itself. When the Johnson administration launched the War on Poverty, U.S. social movements, business associations, and government agencies all promised to repatriate the lessons of development, and they did so by multiplying the uses of austerity and for-profit contracting within their own welfare state. A decade later, ascendant right-wing movements seeking to dismantle the midcentury state did not need to reach for entirely new ideas: they redeployed policies already at hand. This book brings readers to Colombia and back, showing the entanglement of American societies and the contradictory promises of midcentury statebuilding. The untold story of how the road from the New Deal to the Great Society ran through Latin America, the book also offers a surprising new account of the origins of neoliberalism.

Nesting Expectations: What Can the Mexican and Argentinean Cash Transfers Tell Us about the Development of Development?

1969 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 157-169
Author(s):  
Andrés Dapuez
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Cash Transfers ◽  
Conditional Cash Transfers ◽  
Cash Transfer ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Transfer Programs

Latin American cash transfer programs have been implemented aiming at particular anticipatory scenarios. Given that the fulfillment of cash transfer objectives can be calculated neither empirically nor rationally a priori, I analyse these programs in this article using the concept of an “imaginary future.” I posit that cash transfer implementers in Latin America have entertained three main fictional expectations: social pacification in the short term, market inclusion in the long term, and the construction of a more distributive society in the very long term. I classify and date these developing expectations into three waves of conditional cash transfers implementation.

Epidemiology of Hypertension and Diabetes Mellitus in Latin America

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricio Lopez-Jaramillo ◽  
Jose Lopez-Lopez ◽  
Daniel Cohen ◽  
Natalia Alarcon-Ariza ◽  
Margarita Mogollon-Zehr
Keyword(s):  
Diabetes Mellitus ◽  
Type 2 Diabetes ◽  
Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Cardiovascular Diseases ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Premature Mortality ◽  
Increased Risk ◽  
And Control

: Hypertension and type 2 diabetes mellitus are two important risk factors that contribute to cardiovascular diseases worldwide. In Latin America hypertension prevalence varies from 30 to 50%. Moreover, the proportion of awareness, treatment and control of hypertension is very low. The prevalence of type 2 diabetes mellitus varies from 8 to 13% and near to 40% are unaware of their condition. In addition, the prevalence of prediabetes varies from 6 to 14% and this condition has been also associated with increased risk of cardiovascular diseases. The principal factors linked to a higher risk of hypertension in Latin America are increased adiposity, low muscle strength, unhealthy diet, low physical activity and low education. Besides being chronic conditions, leading causes of cardiovascular mortality, both hypertension and type 2 diabetes mellitus represent a substantial cost for the weak health systems of Latin American countries. Therefore, is necessary to implement and reinforce public health programs to improve awareness, treatment and control of hypertension and type 2 diabetes mellitus, in order to reach the mandate of the Unit Nations of decrease the premature mortality for CVD.

An Inter-American Episode

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Lawrence
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Pablo Neruda ◽  
Jose Marti ◽  
The South ◽  
American Reader ◽  
The North ◽  
Literary Theories ◽  
The Us

This chapter focuses on a paradigmatic misencounter between an American experiencer and a Latin American reader. Examining an implicit debate about the sources of Walt Whitman’s poetry and vision of the Americas, I argue that Waldo Frank, one of the twentieth century’s main literary ambassadors from the US to Latin America, positioned Whitman as the representative US writer whose antibookish experiential aesthetics could serve as a model for “American” writers both in the North and in the South. I show how Frank’s framework provided a foil for Borges’s idiosyncratic view that Whitman’s poetry about America derived entirely from his readings of European and US writers. Although much of the best scholarship on Whitman’s reception in Latin America has concentrated on poets like José Martí and Pablo Neruda, who adapted Whitman’s naturalism, I contend that Borges’s iconoclastic portrait of Whitman as a reader profoundly influenced a range of anti-experiential literary theories and practices in Latin America.

A Culture of Solidarity

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lilian Calles Barger
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Black Power ◽  
Cultural Nationalism ◽  
Black History ◽  
Dependency Theory ◽  
Politics Of Difference ◽  
Marginalized Groups ◽  
Black Cultural Nationalism

This chapter examines the politics of difference and solidarity among Latin American and Black Power radicals that challenged the exclusion of marginalized groups from the universal. Dependency theory provided an explanation for neo-colonialism and the long search for Latin America identity and solidarity. A black cultural nationalism and black history provided the motifs for establishing a sense of peoplehood and asserting God is black. A narrative in which God was partial to the oppressed offered a way for liberationists to conceptualize a new inclusive universal humanity.

An Introduction to Gender and Representation in Latin America

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leslie A. Schwindt-Bayer
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Gender Inequality ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Latin American Politics ◽  
Gender And Politics ◽  
Women's Representation ◽  
Political Crises ◽  
Women’S Representation ◽  
And Gender

In this introductory chapter of Gender and Representation in Latin America, Leslie A. Schwindt-Bayer argues that gender inequality in political representation in Latin America is rooted in institutions and the democratic challenges and political crises facing Latin American countries. She situates the book in two important literatures—one on Latin American politics and democratic institutions, the other on gender and politics—and then explains how the book will explore the ways that institutions and democratic challenges and political crises moderate women’s representation and gender inequality. She introduces the book’s framework of analyzing the causes and consequences of women’s representation, overviews the organization of the volume, and summarizes the main arguments of the chapters.

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