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Published Friday, December 11, 2020
Pandemic threatens Human Rights,
UN Says
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff and wire services
The head of the United Nations is urging the world to put human rights “front and center” in the coronavirus recovery efforts to achieve a better future for its citizens.
In a televised address issued on the annual observance of International Human Rights Day, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the covid-19 pandemic has had a “disproportionate impact on vulnerable groups” including frontline workers, the elderly, disabled people, women and girls, and minorities.
The virus “has thrived because poverty, inequality, discrimination, the destruction of our natural environment and other human rights failures, have created enormous fragilities in our societies,” Guterres said, while simultaneously providing leaders with a pretext to impose “heavy-handed security responses and repressive measures that curtail civic space and media freedom.”
In a speech delivered Wednesday in Geneva, U.N. human rights commissioner Michelle Bachelet said the failure of many countries to take the virus seriously and to act quickly enough to prevent its spread has undermined a range of human rights issues around the world, including economic, civil and political rights.
“Politicizing a pandemic in this way is beyond irresponsible – it is utterly reprehensible,” Bachelet said. “Scientific evidence and processes have been discounted, and conspiracy theories and disinformation have been sown and allowed – or encouraged – to thrive.”
The ex-Chilean president said these actions have allowed discrimination, systemic racism and marginalization of the most vulnerable people in the world to flourish, especially in “countries in conflict” such as Yemen, which has suffered from “a perfect storm of five years of conflict and violations, disease, blockades, and shortage of humanitarian funding.”
Although the world is on the cusp of at least one safe and effective covid-19 vaccine, Bachelet said it will not prevent or cure the socio-economic ravages caused by the pandemic. She said the only thing that can accomplish that is the “vaccine of human rights,” whose core ingredients are embedded in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was adopted by the U.N. General Assembly on December 10, 1948.
In Costa Rica, health authorities report a continuous increase in cases of infected and deceased patients due to the virus. The Ministry of Health provided the most up-to-date statistics on Thursday.
• 1,127 new covid-19 cases, bringing the total to 38,078 active cases.
• 20,571 foreign-born people have been infected with a total of 149,815 cases since March, approximately 13.7% of the total cases. Of these, authorities confirmed the death of 32 foreign-born patients. But since October, there is no updated information about foreign-born deaths due to covid-19.
• 607 patients are being treated in public hospitals, where 238 patients are in ICU’s in delicate health conditions (ages range from 1 to 92-years-old). And 369 patients are in recovery rooms. Many of the remaining infected patients are quarantined in their homes.
• 109,855 coronavirus patients have fully recovered, which is a 73.3% recovery rate of the total cases since March.
• 427,401 covid-19 tests have been performed in Costa Rica since March, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering of Johns Hopkins University.
• 1,882 deaths of people infected with covid-19, approximately 1.3% death rate of the total cases since March. Of these 708 women and 1,174 men. The ages range from a 9-year-old to a 101-year-old person.
Readers can see the updated number of total
patients in each district at the National
Distance Education University on its Covid-19 Map.
According to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering, CSSE, at Johns Hopkins University, the pandemic has killed 1,580,867 people worldwide.
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If vaccines are considered a human right because of the pandemic, how will Costa Rica guarantee enough doses of vaccine against covid-19 to the entire population? We would like to know your thoughts on this story. Send your comments to news@amcostarica.com
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