Latin America opens up before it’s ready

ON A SPRING afternoon in Mexicali, in northern Mexico, Erick Mercado pondered what was coming. The private Hispanic American Hospital, where he runs the accident-and-emergency service, had cancelled all elective surgery and made plans to seal off the second floor. In half an hour, he explained, the governor of Baja California would confirm the state’s first coronavirus cases. People with flu-like symptoms, Dr Mercado predicted, would “go into a panic” and rush to hospitals for testing. Sure enough, a queue appeared in the car park by nightfall.