From Health Affairs: Limits of relying on subnational policies in Latin America

Latin America has been one of the regions in the world most affected by the COVID-19 pandemic: while only home to 8 percent of the global population, it accounts for more than 30 percent of all COVID-19 deaths as of mid-May 2021. To better understand the impact of nonpharmaceutical interventions in the COVID-19 response within regions of several Latin American countries, Felicia Marie Knaul and Michael Touchton of the University of Miami, and coauthors from throughout Latin America, examine subnational data for Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, and Peru. For public health measures such as school closures, work and event cancellations, and the use of face masks, the authors found high variation in how such measures were adopted within Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico, but documented centralized national policies in Bolivia, Chile, and Peru. In this first national study to cover daily, subnational policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, the authors observe that subnational responses cannot replace national policy and conclude that governments should focus on evidence-based national policies while coordinating with subnational governments to tailor local responses to changing local conditions.

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