How Much Vital Information Are Latin American Governments Sharing With Their Citizens During the Pandemic? (Spanish)

Authors:

María Teresa Ronderos
Grantee

Rigoberto Carvajal
Grantee

Andrés Bermúdez Liévano
Grantee

Police wearing masks and gloves amid coronavirus outbreak in South America. Image by Myriam B / Shutterstock. Peru, 2020.

English

Using public data and shoe-leather reporting, the Centinela team will probe Latin America’s...

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Illustration by Paula de la Cruz/GK Gráficos. — Paula de la Cruz/GK Gráficos.

As COVID-19 starts to expand through Latin America, citizens in half of the region's countries do not know how many novel coronavirus tests their governments are carrying out on a daily basis.

They are also not aware of the current number of ICU beds available in their communities or whether any patients have recovered from the virus. Only two numbers are universally available in 11 countries in that region: the daily numbers of people infected by COVID-19 and the deceased.

A group of 15 media outlets in 13 countries in Latin America are joining forces to collect information across borders and understand the region's preparedness and response to the biggest global public health crisis in more than a century. As the journalists gather and analyze information, governments throughout the region are using the pandemic as an excuse to weaken access to public data through FOI laws and, in the case of Honduras, to suspend the country's constitutional right to freedom of expression.

To read the full story in Spanish, please visit Clip's website.

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