Washington, July 22 (RHC)-- The director of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), Carissa Etienne, said during a virtual press briefing on COVID-19 that the pandemic "shows no signs of slowing down" in the Americas region.  Almost 900,000 new cases were reported in the last week.

She also explained that the countries with the highest number of new infections and deaths are Mexico, Brazil and the United States.  In the last week, almost 22,000 deaths were reported.  She noted that the Mesoamerican region reported the largest weekly increase in cases since the beginning of the infectious outbreak in the region nearly five months ago.

Carissa Etienne said that in the southern part of the continent, Chile, Argentina and Uruguay have made significant progress in monitoring influenza.  In this regard, the PAHO director explained that this "suggests that hand hygiene and social distancing (measures taken to curb contagion from COVID-19) can also contribute to the reduction of other respiratory viruses."

As of Tuesday, 311,000 deaths had been reported in the Americas region, and it was similarly alerted that around 325,000,000 are at greater risk of suffering from COVID-19 or developing complications.

"The impact of comorbidities on the spread of the virus should be a wake-up call for all countries in the Americas: use the data to adapt your response and make health your top priority," she said.

Regarding the progress of the vaccines, several members of the panel stressed that the results are "encouraging," but explained that the priority for the governments of the region must continue to be prevention.