Venezuelan migrants “struggling to survive” amid COVID-19

Daniels, Joe Parkin

doi:10.1016/s0140-6736(20)30718-2

Cited by 63 publications

(66 citation statements)

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“…Yet COVID-19 travel restrictions may also facilitate stigma and xenophobia by reproducing the social construction of illness as a foreign invasion, in turn reinforcing social hierarchies and power inequities [1,10] -at times through authoritarian means [11]. Enforcement of travel bans, movement restrictions, and quarantines may disproportionately affect already stigmatized persons, including homeless persons [17], persons who are incarcerated [18], migrants and refugees [19], undocumented immigrants [20], and racial minorities [8]. There are global media reports of arrests for COVID-19 transmission [21][22][23][24][25].…”

Section: Tensions Between Stigma Mitigation and Covid-19 Public Healtmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This is not unique to HIV: the United Nations Population Fund also reported significant funding shortfalls for humanitarian relief in 2019 [39]. We need to act now to harness political investment in challenging the social inequities that exacerbate COVID-19′s impact on marginalized communities-such as refugees [19] and undocumented immigrants [20]-rather than waiting for the pandemic to subside when there may be a decreased sense of commitment, urgency, and momentum.…”

Section: Tensions Between Stigma Mitigation and Covid-19 Public Healtmentioning

confidence: 99%

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How Do We Balance Tensions Between COVID-19 Public Health Responses and Stigma Mitigation? Learning from HIV Research

2020

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We are not being invaded. The body is not a battlefield. The ill are neither unavoidable casualties nor the enemy. We-medicine, society-are not authorized to fight back by any means whatever. -Sontag (1 p. 180) Sontag's quotation above from 'AIDS and its metaphors' [1] reminds us to expose, and disengage from, constructions of illness that propagate fear. We are called to address the fear of COVID-19 by correcting misinformation [2,3]. While misinformation is indeed a driver of fear and stigma, other underlying facilitators produce stigma [4,5] and need to be considered in stigma mitigation. HIV research and an understanding of the historical construction of illness can be leveraged to mitigate COVID-19 stigma. COVID-19 public health responses-essential for prevention and containment [6,7]-also have the potential to exacerbate stigma [8]. We outline four tensions between COVID-19 containment and stigma mitigation, and offer possible ways forward.

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Section: Tensions Between Stigma Mitigation and Covid-19 Public Healtmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Tensions Between Stigma Mitigation and Covid-19 Public Healtmentioning

confidence: 99%

How Do We Balance Tensions Between COVID-19 Public Health Responses and Stigma Mitigation? Learning from HIV Research

2020

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“…The concurrent humanitarian crisis has forced millions of Venezuelans to flee to neighboring countries ---mainly Colombia--- seeking economic and social stability ( Torres and Castro, 2019 ; Tuite et al, 2018 ). Venezuelans with ongoing health issues also travel to Colombia to obtain high-quality healthcare such as surgical procedures and hemodialysis ( Daniels, 2020 ). However, massive Venezuelan migration has resulted in an unprecedented infectious disease exodus, representing one of the most concerning public health threats in the region ( Grillet et al, 2019 ; Torres and Castro, 2019 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Venezuela's ongoing humanitarian crisis has had a severe impact on its health care system: the country has experienced a mass exodus of medical personnel, shortages of treatment and supplies, as well as a systematic dismantling of public health infrastructure ( Daniels, 2020 ). In addition, the increased poverty and violence, plus the abandonment of all epidemiological surveillance programs, has set the stage for the re-emergence of vaccine-preventable and vector-borne diseases ( Grillet et al, 2019 ; Paniz-Mondolfi et al, 2019 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Furthermore, the political and economic turmoil in Venezuela has precipitated one of the largest refugee crises witnessed in the hemisphere. This has resulted in the establishment of disease corridors to neighboring countries---particularly Colombia, which houses 1.4 million Venezuelan migrants ( Daniels, 2020 ; Torres and Castro, 2019 ). Despite early implementation of lockdown and border restrictions starting in March 2020, control of cross-border migration has remained a challenge due to the length (approximately 2219 km) of the Venezuelan-Colombian border, and the unregulated transit of individuals through illegal trails known as “trochas”.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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SARS-CoV-2 spread across the Colombian-Venezuelan border

Paniz‐Mondolfi

Muñoz

Flórez

et al. 2020

Infection, Genetics and Evolution

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Introduction Venezuela and Colombia both adopted measures of containment early in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, Venezuela's ongoing humanitarian crisis has decimated its health care system, and forced millions of Venezuelans to flee through its porous border with Colombia. The extensive shared border, and illegal cross-border transit through improvised trails between the two countries are major challenges for public health authorities. We report the first SARS-CoV-2 genomes from Venezuela, and present a snapshot of the SARS-CoV-2 epidemiologic landscape in the Colombian-Venezuelan border region. Methods We sequenced and assembled viral genomes from total RNA extracted from nasopharyngeal (NP) clinical specimens using a custom reference-based analysis pipeline. Three assemblies obtained were subjected to typing using the Phylogenetic Assignment of Named Global Outbreak LINeages ‘Pangolin’ tool. A total of 376 publicly available SARS-CoV-2 genomes from South America were obtained from the GISAID database to perform comparative genomic analyses. Additionally, the Wuhan-1 strain was used as reference. Results We found that two of the SARS-CoV-2 genomes from Venezuela belonged to the B1 lineage, and the third to the B.1.13 lineage. We observed a point mutation in the Spike protein gene (D614G substitution), previously reported to be associated with increased infectivity, in all three Venezuelan genomes. An additional three mutations (R203K/G204R substitution) were present in the nucleocapsid (N) gene of one Venezuelan genome. Conclusions Genomic sequencing demonstrates similarity between SARS-CoV-2 lineages from Venezuela and viruses collected from patients in bordering areas in Colombia and from Brazil, consistent with cross-border transit despite administrative measures including lockdowns. The presence of mutations associated with increased infectivity in the 3 Venezuelan genomes we report and Colombian SARS-CoV-2 genomes from neighboring borders areas may pose additional challenges for control of SARS-CoV-2 spread in the complex epidemiological landscape in Latin American countries. Public health authorities should carefully follow the progress of the pandemic and its impact on displaced populations within the region.

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Health policy response to mobility during the pandemic: Evaluating the effectiveness using location‐based services big data

Yuan

Zhao

2022

Health Planning & Management

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As an emergent health policy response, the population mobility restriction policy was implemented to cope with the unprecedented pandemic that outbroke in early 2020, but its effectiveness showed vast disparities even within a single country. Using multisource data from Baidu mobility big data and the statistics of novel coronavirus disease in China, mobility restrictions (including restrictions on inflow-mobility, outflow-mobility, and intra-city mobility) were examined.It was found that the mobility restriction had contained the development of pandemic, but such effect would gradually recede over time. Moreover, there existed region-specific policy effectiveness. Specifically, outflow-mobility restrictions were ineffective in reducing death cases in population influx areas, and restrictions on inflow-mobility (or intra-city mobility) were ineffective in reducing confirmed cases (or death cases) in population outflow areas. It was concluded that the mobility restriction policy can be effective in epidemic prevention and control in spatial-temporal pattern.However, there was a remarkable disparity in policy effectiveness between different regions with different population mobility patterns.

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Venezuelan migrants “struggling to survive” amid COVID-19

Abstract: Venezuelan migrants "struggling to survive" amid COVID-19Humanitarian organisations are concerned that border closures and health-care shortages are amplifying the challenges posed by COVID-19. Joe Parkin Daniels reports from Bogotá.

Cited by 63 publications

References 0 publications

How Do We Balance Tensions Between COVID-19 Public Health Responses and Stigma Mitigation? Learning from HIV Research

How Do We Balance Tensions Between COVID-19 Public Health Responses and Stigma Mitigation? Learning from HIV Research

SARS-CoV-2 spread across the Colombian-Venezuelan border

Health policy response to mobility during the pandemic: Evaluating the effectiveness using location‐based services big data

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