Latin America and the Caribbean will have a slow and rough economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). 

But first, the nations in the region have to seize firm control of the pandemic, and that's unlikely to happen in a hurry. 

"It would be a historic health conquest if we could do it by the end of this year," Jarbas Barbosa, assistant director of the Pan American Health Organization, was quoted as saying recently. 

The rollout of vaccines is already very sluggish and, from all accounts, will not be fast enough to have a strong knock-on effect on growth. 

What that means in economic terms is that Latin America and the Caribbean, already the hardest-hit region, is projected to achieve full recovery later than other areas of the world, according to IMF economists. 

Economic activity will not return to pre-pandemic levels of output until 2023, and gross domestic product (GDP) per capita will catch up only in 2025, they said in a forecast posted on the IMF website on Monday. 

'High social and human costs'

The recovery in the region has been threatened by the pandemic's recent resurgence and the reintroduction of stricter containment measures in some countries, as well as spillovers from the slowdown in the global economy, the IMF said. 

Still, the Fund has revised its regional 2021 growth forecast upwards to 4.1 percent (from 3.6 percent in October), based on the stronger than expected performance in 2020, an expectation of expanding vaccination efforts, a better growth outlook for the United States, and higher prices of some commodities. 

But it warned, "The pandemic's social and human costs have been immense, and cast a large shadow over this forecast." 

The IMF said that in excess of 16 million people in Latin America are estimated to have fallen into poverty during the crisis. 

More than 18 million people have been infected with coronavirus, and 600,000-plus have died. 

'Very dark' Caribbean outlook

Latin America accounts for over 8 percent of the world's population, but it has suffered more than a quarter of all COVID-19 deaths. 

The IMF said a weak rebound in labor markets would cause more permanent social damage while changes in international investor sentiment "would put pressure on countries with fiscal and external vulnerabilities." 

The slowest growth in the region this year is expected to be in the tourism-dependent economies of the Caribbean. 

Speaking in a virtual video presentation on the economic prospects, IMF Western Hemisphere Department Director Alejandro Werner described the situation in these mainly tiny islands as "very, very dark." 

Most of them had spent and borrowed last year in the early expectation that tourism would bounce back speedily in 2021, but that "is not going to happen now," Werner conceded. 

The IMF also noted that Central America and the Caribbean face the additional risk of natural disasters, as shown by the devastation of hurricanes Eta and Iota last November.