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With nearly 40,000 deaths, Brazil has registered the world's third-highest COVID-19 death toll and the second-highest confirmed caseload. Its neighbors fear the disease is spilling across Brazil's borders. Indeed, one Colombian frontier town has already turned into a coronavirus hot spot. Located at the southern-most tip of Colombia, Leticia is an Amazon River port abutting Brazil and Peru. There are few flights and no roads connecting the town to the rest of Colombia. So, Leticia's 50,000 people get the vast majority of their food and supplies from the neighboring South American countries.
Jesús Galdino, the governor of Colombia's Amazonas department or state, which includes Leticia, says this economic reality made it impossible for Colombia to seal its border when the coronavirus began sweeping through Brazil. In addition, many Colombians live in Tabatinga, a Brazilian town next to Leticia, and they frequently cross to the Colombian side to work, shop or visit relatives. In some neighborhoods, the street forms the dividing line between the two nations. "It would have been futile to try to set up a blockade," Galdino said in a telephone interview from Leticia. "And with COVID making such a huge impact in Brazil, the number of cases here has also been massive." Now, nearly 2,000 people in and around Leticia are sick with COVID-19. About 70 have died. That might not sound like a colossal death toll at first. But because the surrounding state of Amazonas is sparsely populated, this amounts to the highest per-capita death rate in all of Colombia, according to figures from Colombia's Health Ministry...
