Running rampantAcross the developing world, economies have been forced to open up even with the virus still running rampant, quickly overwhelming underfunded hospitals.The list of worst-affected countries globally has accordingly shifted from rich to poor as the pandemic races around the world.
Where once countries like Italy, Spain and the UK had the biggest outbreaks and highest death tolls, now the US is the only advanced economy in the top ten, among other developing nations like Mexico, Peru and South Africa.Nowhere has the developing world’s plight played out more viscerally than in India, where an ambitious national lockdown imposed in March was lifted after two months as joblessness, starvation and a mass migration of workers.