The COVID-19 pandemic in Nicaragua was a part of the worldwide pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 () caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (). The virus was shown to have spread to Nicaragua when the first case, a Nicaraguan citizen who had returned to the country from Panama, was confirmed on 18 March 2020.
According to official figures from the Nicaraguan Ministry of Health, after the first case was reported on 18 March 2020, very few cases were detected for the following 8 weeks until a significant increase in the number of cases began in May 2020.
Subsequently, from around mid-July 2020 the rate of new cases rapidly decreased, and as of January 2021, the country as a whole is showing one of the lowest number of cases in Latin America.
However, opposition leaders have criticized the government's approach to controlling the pandemic, and an organisation called Citizens Observatory has stated that the figures are significantly higher, particularly the number of deaths.
Background
On 12 January 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed that a novel coronavirus was the cause of a respiratory illness in a cluster of people in Wuhan City, Hubei Province, China, which was reported to the WHO on 31 December 2019.
The case fatality ratio for COVID-19 has been much lower than SARS of 2003, but the transmission has been significantly greater, with a significant total death toll.
Response
Methods of controlling the virus
The government initially focused on an education program, with health professionals and volunteers visiting 1.2 million households in the last week of March, and additional information being distributed via TV and other media.
The government's response to the crisis was stated to be an attempt to keep the pandemic under control whilst allowing the country to continue normal activity without lockdown. The government's approach was explicitly published on 25 May, in its "White Book", a publication explaining its approach to controlling the outbreak. In the document Nicaragua's approach is likened to that of Sweden: "With the increasing abandon of the "lockdowns", all the countries of the world will have to combine defense against the Coronavirus with the functioning of society, just as Nicaragua and Sweden have done from the beginning." The Nicaraguan government regarded the use of lockdowns as impractical as most Nicaraguans need to leave home each day to earn enough to survive. The government's response started in January 2020, when it established Covid wards in 18 hospitals, put health checks in place at the country's points of entry with mandatory quarantines and tackled misinformation about the virus. Almost five million house to house visits by "health brigades" were conducted to provide information to residents.
Children returned to school after the Easter 2020 break as normal, government employees returned to work and most activity continued with minimal limitations. President Daniel Ortega said Nicaraguans "haven't stopped working, because if this country stops working, it dies."
Ana Emilia Solís, from the World Health Organization stated in March 2020 that since January, when the Nicaraguan Government declared a sanitary alert due to the threat of COVID-19: "Nicaragua has been working according to [WHO] guidelines. It has been working hard on the enlistment of health services, strengthening epidemiological surveillance and has been working with the Community Health Network to identify possible cases that may occur at the community level".
A delegation from the Pan American Health Organization, the regional branch of the WHO, visited the country in the second week of March to coordinate measures to protect against the virus. Alexander Florencio, a representative of the delegation, stated that "the best conditions are being prepared". Florencio added that "provisions being made [by the government] have incorporated all PAHO recommendations."