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Brazil’s surge of coronavirus cases and lack of social distancing measures is raising concerns that construction workers, truck drivers and tourists from Latin America’s largest nation could spread the disease to neighboring countries

Brazil’s virtually uncontrolled surge of COVID-19 cases is spawning fear that construction workers, truck drivers and tourists from Latin America's biggest nation will spread the disease to neighboring countries that are doing a better job of controlling the coronavirus.

Brazil, a continent-sized country that shares borders with nearly every other nation in South America, has reported more than 70,000 cases and more than 5,000 deaths, according to government figures and a tally by Johns Hopkins University — far more than any of its neighbors. The true number of deaths and infections is believed to be much higher because of limited testing.

The country’s borders remain open, there are virtually no quarantines or curfews and President Jair Bolsonaro continues to scoff at the seriousness of the disease.

The country of 211 million people surpassed China — where the virus began — in the official number of COVID-19 deaths this week, prompting Bolsonaro to say: “So what?"

“I am sorry,’’ the far-right president told journalists. “What do you want me to do?”

In Paraguay, soldiers enforcing anti-virus measures have dug a shallow trench alongside the first 800 feet (244 meters) of the main road entering the city of Pedro Juan Caballero from the neighboring Brazilian city of Punta Porá, to prevent people from walking along the road from Brazil and disappearing into the surrounding city.

“Brazil worries me a lot,” Argentine President Alberto Fernández told local news outlets Saturday. “A lot of traffic is coming from Sao Paulo, where the infection rate is extremely high, and it doesn’t appear to me that the Brazilian government is taking it with the seriousness that it requires. That worries me a lot, for the Brazilian people and also because it can be carried to Argentina.” 

Authorities in Colombia are also worried, said Julián Fernandez Niño, an epidemiologist at National University in Bogota. 

In Uruguay, President Luis Lacalle Pou said the spread of the virus in Brazil was setting off “warning lights” in his administration and authorities are tightening border controls in several frontier cities. 

Even socialist Venezuela, where the health system has been in a yearslong state of collapse, has said it's worried about neighboring Brazil. 

Bolivia's government, a right-wing ally of Bolsonaro's, declined to comment on its neighbor's anti-virus measures, but Defense Minister Fernando López promised this month to strongly enforce the closure of the border. 

Gerald Imray and Maria Cheng for the AP:

In July, J&J's patent on the [tuberculosis drug bedaquiline] expired in South Africa, but the company had it extended until 2027, enraging activists who accused it of profiteering.

The South African government then began investigating the company's pricing policies. It had been paying about 5,400 rand ($282) per treatment course, more than twice as much as poor countries that got the drug via a global effort called the Stop TB partnership.

In September, about a week after South Africa's probe began, J&J announced that it would drop its patent in more than 130 countries, allowing generic-makers to copy the drug.

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Meanwhile, in Colombia, the government declared last month that it would issue a compulsory license for the HIV drug dolutegravir without permission from the drug's patent-holder, Viiv Healthcare. The decision came after more than 120 groups asked the Colombian government to expand access to the WHO-recommended drug.