Venezuela has entered another week under preventive social quarantine, following the government’s announcement on Friday 13 March that the country’s first cases of coronavirus had been detected. A terrible burden is being borne by the working-class and poor, who were already facing a dire economic crisis before the sanction-strangled healthcare system faced the prospect of the COVID-19 pandemic.

As the coronavirus pandemic rages on, we are told: “the virus does not discriminate – rich and poor alike, we are all in this together”. However, the reality is that the privileged elite, who enjoy relative safety, expect the workers to risk infection to keep profits rolling in. This virus is exposing the rotten and heartless nature of the capitalist system, where profits rather than human lives are the priority.