Facing the Pandemic in Costa Rica. An academic view

In December 2021, Costa Rica’s monthly index of economic activity (IMEA in its Spanish initials) was higher than the pre-pandemic levels, with an annual growth of 7.6 percent (Central Bank of Costa Rica, 2022). Multidimensional poverty remained at sixteen percent since the beginning of the pandemic, a sad reality for a country that, according to the Happy Planet Index 2019, is the happiest in the world (cited in Wellbeing Economy Alliance, s. f.).

Beyond the human and health tragedy, the pandemic caused the biggest economic shortage since the debt crisis of the 1980s, the “lost decade” in Latin America. The pandemic corresponded to an “induced coma”, which is why the recovery was so quick. It was a macroeconomic stumble, both in terms of supply and aggregated demand, whose legacy is the inflation is still present at the start of 2022, even before the tragic war events in Eastern Europe, latent since 2014 and intensified in February 2022.

In the health area, Costa Rican Ministry of Health (Minsa, Spanish acronym) authorized private drugstores to sell medicines for COVID-19, while the health pass was no longer required to enter the country. The long night of the pandemic approaches if new variants of the virus do not appear.

Costa Rica, with a population close to five and a half million inhabitants, has received, as of February 2022, eight and a half million COVID-19 vaccine doses (CCSS, 2022). Seventy-one percent of the target population have received two doses and eighty percent have been immunized at least once. Twelve percent have received three doses; the country has not started fourth dose round. With a century-old vaccine tradition and with ninety-four percent of the population’s health coverage (WHO, 2018), the fight against the pandemic has been successful.

A hard to ignore scar is the severe impact the pandemic has inflicted on the education system, once the pride of the country. It is true that the lockdown was severe in 2020 because factors such as the virus, contagion and duration of the pandemic were unknown. In February 2021, the doors of the four thousand schools in the country were reopened for 1.19 million children and teenagers. It was done under a model that combined presential and distance lessons; there is no doubt that schoolchildren from families with more needs had greater difficulties. The disappointing results of the system that the PISA tests showed in 2018 (OECD, 2018) will be worse when the next register is made. Having said this, one cannot lose sight of the fact that the country, which seventy-five years ago was mainly agricultural and undoubtedly poor, thanks to a long-term commitment to the development of its human capital —then small—, has become one focused on in services. The nation that banished the army in 1948 ended the last century with human talent as its greatest asset. That makes education the source of growth and, if it is not effective and efficient, it represents a huge risk.
The Protection Bond (Bono Proteger, MTSS, 2022) was a creative action. During three months of 2020, the Government of Costa Rica delivered to around half of the country’s workforce approximately half a minimum wage (USD 208). In a nation where health care and education are citizen’s rights, the government did its best effort.

Regional development banks and other cooperation agencies supported Costa Rica, both to make room for the Protection Bond, and for the purchase of vaccines when they were available in December 2021.

EDUCATION AND ITS CONTRIBUTION TO THE COUNTRY
The University of Costa Rica (UCR) has responded with human capital and installed capacity provided by eight decades of public resources placed at its service. At least seven initiatives focused on the pandemic are worth mentioning:

• The Clodomiro Picado Institute conducted research on plasma serum from recovered patients.
• The School of Physics focused on a portable mechanical ventilator for patients.
• Mathematicians modeled the dynamics of virus transmission in the national territory.
• The Development Observatory created an interactive platform with updated information on COVID-19 statistics.
• The School of Medicine is working on a non-invasive artificial ventilator.
• The Pharmaceutical Research Institute works on a biocomputational platform to identify inhibitors against the coronavirus.
• The School of Economics (EE, Spanish initials) and the Central American Population Center convened a multicontinental forum of experts in health economics to identify pandemic experiences and the directions in which progress could emerge.

In addition, EE dedicated its efforts to something natural for them: supporting processes and individuals in facing the pandemic that had affected the country and its productive structure. An area in which EE was already present is that of the learning problems among the population. EE designed and organized the university community work (UCW); the main course of this community service is “Economy for life” and its targeted to high school teenagers from the most deprived neighborhoods of the San José metropolitan area. The course has been a success and the fact that students of humanities joined allowed the presence of new knowledge-dialogues. Writing and Mathbegan to be taught, which enriched the program. Another perk that came with the change of teaching methods was that with distanced courses a lot of the population started to enroll in the UCW of the EE, many of them came from the coastal regions. Contrary to what many thought, attendance was a kind of prison. The management of the UCW expanded the service for the preparation of university admission exams. Now it contemplates one more year of accompaniment to newly admitted students.

Two teachers from the EE played a key role in preparing the Eighth Report on Education Status (CONARE, 2021). The director of the report, Isabel Román, appeared in Hablando claro (Clearly Speaking), a TV show with Vilma Ibarra, in Quince UCR channel (Costa Rican university television), on February 25th, 2022, making a synthesis of the findings on the period that corresponds to the idle educational blackout of 2019 and the inequity that affected the students with most needs in 2020 and 2021 due to teaching that not always was face-to-face. Two consequences are inevitable: in the youngest sector of the students’ group, there are those who, at the age of ten, still cannot read correctly. There are also students who arrive at universities with serious deficiencies in terms of basic knowledge. The apparent overcoming of COVID-19 leaves room for improvement. It must be done. Once again, Costa Rica bet on its greatest wealth: its human capital. It must be done well and soon.

Román and his collaborators also evaluated the state of higher education. The five public universities address a problem that reflects the country’s problems. Now that the percentage of gross domestic product that supports education is the size of the huge public deficit, parsimony is necessary. The authors propose to improve the quality of investments and to create ways to produce their own income. A possible option that the study detects lies in the problem of re-coursing classes, which happens in a limited number of courses and therefore suggests possible solutions. These characteristics show in almost all public higher education centers. This way, the UCR joins in the pertinent analyzes and the development of proposals for solutions to the problems detected.

INTER-INSTITUTIONAL COLLABORATION
On the other hand, the dissemination of scientific results and objective knowledge (in the era of “alternative truths”) is also one of the responsibilities of the UCR. Collaboration with UNAM has paid off, and it has been developing through university television (Quince UCR), where Antonio Lazcano, professor emeritus of UNAM’s School of Sciences, attended the first in a series of appearances of Mexican academics in May 2020 (the interview with Dr. Lazcano can be seen at https://youtu.be/dlGy4jurrUI). The expert in evolutionary biology explained the characteristics of viruses and research results from his laboratory. Carlos Valdés, Director of UNAM’s Headquarters in Costa Rica, discussed how a multidisciplinary team from UNAM had estimated equations of factors that increased the frequency of viral infection and contagion from a geographic breakdown (the interview with Carlos Valdés can be seen at: https://youtu.be/lvqXRCpkGtI). Later, César Hugo Hernández, microbiologist from the National Polytechnic Institute of Mexico, described global pollution since the appearance of COVID-19 at the end of 2019 (see: https://youtu.be/PQoRKc_6wLA). He highlighted the role of science: the most important ally that humanity has in the face of present and future health emergencies. Lastly, the director of UNAM’s Biotechnology Institute, Laura Palomares, highlighted the achievements of this research institute in the development of vaccines, especially those for dengue and related viruses (see: https://youtu.be/LKz9El7OHHo). World-class science is done from Cuernavaca and sharing that testimony with the Costa Rican television audience is valuable.

In another collaboration window with UNAM academics, Mireya Imaz, Gustavo Olaiz, Ana Beristaín and Arturo Juárez, who participated in the development of a computer application that supports prevention by monitoring the pandemic and its risk of expansion, reported on their specific experience (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUAudc_jbJY).

The audience was also enriched with a review of the European experience through the contributions of Guillem López i Casasnovas, from Cataluña, (https://youtu.be/984y2Bpvvxw) and Salvador Peiró, from Valencia (https://youtu.be/-oqmv7L7yxc). The former offered his vision of public finances to address the health economy in dealing with the pandemic, while the latter summarized the two-day conference that the EE organized in mid-2021 with a dozen Costa Rican and foreign experts. In short, the UCR was present in the field that concerns it, that of knowledge, and made it available to society in the face of an unexpected and tragic pandemic that has already lasted two years.

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