Latin America's crucial food markets fuel virus spread

As the coronavirus pandemic swamps countries from Mexico to Argentina, public health officials are struggling to contain outbreaks seeded at Latin America's iconic covered food markets, a beloved, essential feature of life in the region.

Unable to close and always crowded, markets are also a near-perfect setting for spreading the disease.

Mexico City's main wholesale market detects dozens of coronavirus cases every week.

A covered food market in Venezuela was the source of one of the largest outbreaks in the country.

And every single merchant in a vast market in Peru has tested positive for the virus.

With hundreds of millions relying on such markets for their food and livelihoods, officials are debating whether and how they can operate safely.

With inconsistent testing, huge gaps in health coverage, poorly enforced social distancing measures and widespread inequality, many Latin American countries are seeing large and rising numbers of new cases daily, making the region one of the hardest-hit in the world.

Mexico City's massive Central de Abasto is an approximately 3-square-kilometer compound of lots, warehouses, loading bays and wholesale outlets that is the main depot for getting fruit, vegetables and other produce to about 20 million consumers in the metropolitan area.

Its labyrinthine hallways are crowded with 90,000 workers and up to 300,000 customers each day.

The market has recorded 690 confirmed coronavirus cases, with a peak of over 200 cases per week in May.

But its director, Hector Garcia Nieto, says that the weekly number of cases has fallen to only about 60 or 70 since the market installed its own testing center. The Central de Abastos even instituted contact tracing long before the city did.

Lab technician Ulises Cadena Santana helps take as many as 100 COVID-19 test samples per day outside the market.

"The big majority of cases come in asymptomatic," said Cadena Santana.

"They appear healthy, they have no symptoms, they are the most dangerous positive cases."

In Colombia, Mauricio Parra, the manager of Bogota's Corabastos produce market, insists the market can be safe, even as it serves up to 80,000 customers and 10,000 trucks every day.

The market has temperatures checks and 500 hand-washing stations.

Peru has more than 2,600 food markets.

In May, the government said that after examining thousands of vendors, it found that 36 of Lima's largest markets were points of contagion.

At the Belén Market in Peru's Loreto region, officials found that 100% of the vendors were infected.

All 2,500 of the market's stalls were destroyed.

In Maracaibo, Venezuela, the Las Pulgas market has been identified as the source of one of the largest outbreaks in the country, responsible for 400 of the province's nearly 580 recorded coronavirus cases.

About a dozen deaths have been linked to the market.

The outbreak likely became so deadly because the vendors who run the informal stalls around the market refused for weeks to close up shop since they receive no government support and must continue selling.

The way the insecurity of people working in the informal economy has helped fuel outbreaks can be seen across Latin America.

Finally, the government ordered Las Pulgas shut down.

But in many places in Latin America, there has been violent resistance to attempts to close markets. In Bolivia in late June, in the La Paz suburb of El Alto, street market vendors stoned police officers who were trying to enforce a lockdown.

At Rio de Janeiro's Ceasa wholesale market, where about 50,000 customers and workers buzz about every day, fruit and vegetable vendor Marcos dos Santos now wears a mask.

"I'm wearing the mask because I lost a lot of friends here," Dos Santos said as he waited on customers.

"When we see people we know dying, we see that it's real."

There has been much debate about whether these markets can be blamed for the spread of the virus and whether they can ever operate safely.

Many that were initially closed have reopened with measures like limiting the number of people, forming orderly lines, taking temperatures and requiring the use of masks.

Rules that are routinely flouted across the crowded and often narrow spaces where people haggle.