BOGOTA -— Countries in the Caribbean and Latin America should prioritize pregnant and lactating women in distribution of COVID-19 shots, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) said today. PAHO said the ability of the coronavirus vaccines to protect women and their babies is tremendous. “PAHO recommends that all pregnant women

CARACAS — Pan American Health Organization Director Carissa Etienne warned that 75 percent of the population in Latin America and the Caribbean has yet to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 and reported that PAHO is accelerating its drive to expand vaccine access throughout the region. “Three fourths of people in

HAVANA — COVID-19 continues to inflict a devastating toll on the Americas, with Argentina, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador and Paraguay among the countries with the world’s highest weekly death rates, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) said today. Cases have more than doubled in the United States over the last week,

Following is the text of UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ video message for the opening session of the eleventh Caribbean Community (CARICOM)-United Nations General Meeting: Let me begin by thanking you for taking part in this eleventh CARICOM-UN General Meeting. The two years since our last Meeting have proved to be

SAN JUAN — The U.S. Virgin Islands is doing twice as good as the rest of the Caribbean in terms of the number of vaccinations given, but still lags far behind the United States among those fully vaccinated — making herd immunity even harder to reach here — if not

GEORGE TOWN — Doctors Hospital has applied to the Grand Court in Cayman for leave for judicial review of the ongoing failure by the Government of the Cayman Islands to formulate and publish criteria against which healthcare facilities are assessed before being designated as a facility that may employ ‘institutionally

CHARLOTTE AMALIE — Mutant strains of COVID-19 present the greatest risk of infection to people in the U.S. Virgin Islands because the B117 and the delta variant are at least 50 percent more transmissible than previous versions of coronavirus, health experts warn. The delta variant (first detected in India in

PORT-AU-PRINCE — Cases of life-threatening malnutrition are expected to more than double among young Haitian children this year, due to COVID-19, gang violence and extreme weather associated with climate change, the U.N. children’s fund UNICEF said today. Haiti, the poorest country in the Americas, has long had one of the

BRASILIA — The death toll from COVID-19 in Latin America and the Caribbean was due to pass one million people today, according to a Reuters tally, with the pandemic worsening in the part of the world with the highest per capita death rate. From the dusty highlands of Bolivia to

MEXICO CITY — Hardships caused by the coronavirus pandemic have forced former sex workers in Mexico back into the trade years after they left, made it more dangerous and reduced some to having sex in cars or on sidewalks for lack of available hotels. Claudia, who like most of the