Economy

How the COVID-19 pandemic affected North America

One of the biggest factors that resulted in the rapid spread of the infection across the continent of North America was the overconfidence and negligence displayed by governments

 
By Saikat Kumar Basu
Published: Wednesday 06 October 2021

Photo: Saikat BasuThe continent of North America has been affected by the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic like other parts of our planet. However, the situation varies from one country to another across the continent — from Canada to the United States and Mexico and into central America.

The infection curve has been fluctuating and going from bad to worse. It hits a plateau for quite some time and then again shows fluctuations, with infection levels going up and down.

This is irrespective of the fact that the countries that make up North America vary significantly in size, population, available natural resources, economy as well as political stability.

There are gigantic countries like the Canada (the second-largest country in the world after Russia) and the United States on one hand. On the other, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Antigua and Barbuda, St Kitts and Nevis constitute the smallest countries on the continent.

There are 23 countries included within the georgaphical extent of the North American continent. These are spread across the sub-regions of North America, the Caribbean and central America.

Thus, the continent, which is situated across the Northern and Western Hemispheres, consists of developed, developing as well under-developed nations. 

Most of the smaller central American and Caribbean nations have suffered catastrophic economic hardships during the pandemic. The reason is that these smaller countries have limited natural resources, substantial human populations, bad economy, poor governance and high levels of corruption.

Also, most of them are heavily dependent on tourism, agriculture and subsistence. The pandemic has cut down the international tourist flow drastically to most of these small countries.

This has made them socio-economically vulnerable to inflation, unemployment, nepotism and corruption, together with political instability, further jeopardising the livelihoods of ordinary citizens. 

The conditions of the United States and Canada, the two large and dominant economies of the continent, are not great either. Both have suffered significantly due to the economic loss as well as from the dissemination of the virus to every possible corner of their territories with detrimental impact.

Post-pandemic elections have led to a change of guard in the United States, but re-election of the incumbent political party in Canada. Overall, both countries have undergone rapid transformation due to the pandemic, both economy-wise as well as in social life.

The United States was worst impacted in terms of number of people dying from COVID-19 infections by recording the highest number of deaths across the entire planet. 

One of the biggest factors that resulted in the rapid spread of the infection across the continent of North America was the overconfidence and negligence displayed by governments.

Most governments across the continent did not pay any attention to the initial World Health Organization warnings. International borders across land, water and air remained open for a very long time.

When the borders were closed, it was already too late. The initial slow reaction of the local governments across countries in North America led to a deterioration of the situation.

Also, a significant section of people were misguided by vote-based politics to not use protective clothing, follow COVID-19 protocol or wear masks.

Irresponsibility, lack of education and awareness, dense population and lack of vaccination, as well as unavailability of preventive medicine made matters even more challenging than expected. 

The vaccination drive is now in full swing in most countries. Subsequentlty, the rate of infection and deaths has been arrested. But most countries are expecting another wave of COVID-19 in the next few months.

The chances of another round of infections is being actively anticipated, with COVID-19 control measures being a bit more relaxed.

The economy is badly unsettled due to the pandemic. All businesses have been hit hard. Larger companies with huge financial resources are trying to overcome their challenges.

But, medium- and small-scale factories are in jeopardy. Economic bailouts, soft loans and advance credit payments are some of the measures adopted by the government to protect the interest of the farmers and safeguard their income.

The agricultural economy across the continent has been extremely unstable during the pandemic. Many farmers were unable to sell their produce due to a lack of demand in the international market.

Others accepted low prices for their crops due to the fear of getting stranded midway due to a lack of customers.

However, due to long periods of lockdowns and the closure of major industries, pollution levels went down and potable water quality improved over time. The pandemic was a good time for local wildlife due to peace and tranquillity in the cities.

Saikat Kumar Basu works as a freelance journalist and is passionate about issues related to ecology and environment that impact and influence the global conservation of forests, wildlife and biodiversity

Views expressed are the author's own and don't necessarily reflect those of Down To Earth

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