Pedestrians venture out in the rain in the Petionville district of Port-au-Prince, Haiti on Friday.
“In the coming days and weeks, children and families will be at risk of being hit simultaneously by two disasters, Covid-19 and hurricanes,” said Bernt Aasen, Unicef’s regional director for Latin America and the Caribbean.With more than 4.5 million Covid-19 cases and about 190,000 deaths, Latin America and the Caribbean have become a global hot spot for infections.
“Social distancing will mean some evacuation shelters cannot be used or cannot take as many people as usual,” Patricia Scotland, Secretary-General of the Commonwealth of Nations, an association of 54 countries, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. The Caribbean has already experienced more frequent and severe storms and hurricanes tied to global warming in recent years.
Thousands of people still live in tents and makeshift shelters and rely on drinking water delivered by truck.