There’s No App to Beat Covid in Latin America
Tech wizardry can’t overcome the underlying political and social problems that have hampered the continent’s pandemic fight.
Closing the digital divide would help.
Photographer: Pablo Porciuncula/AFP via Getty Images
Whether it’s standing up to corporate tobacco, pioneering the rainbow agenda or branding Big Marijuana, Uruguay’s public-policy chutzpah stands out in the Americas. So it was little surprise when this nation of 3.4 million joined the world’s pacesetters in vaccine rollout. Some 28 of every 100 Uruguayans have had at least one anti-Covid-19 shot, the best record in the continent after Chile’s, and nearly triple the jabs per capita of its richer neighbors Brazil and Argentina.
Uruguay’s initiatives — last year’s widely praised contact tracing app and a more recent vaccine booking tool — were hailed as vital signs of a maturing body politic, in which judicious use of information technology can expedite solutions to 21st-century challenges. As goes tiny Uruguay, why not the rest of Latin America, where societies battling the worst health emergency on record sorely need smart tools to monitor contagion, model policy response, whisk relief to the afflicted and revive devastated economies?