When Nicaragua identified its first COVID-19 case on March 18, 2020, President Daniel Ortega understood that shutting down the economy would be catastrophic for the country’s informal farmworkers. In Nicaragua, three-quarters of all jobs are in farming. If workers don’t work, they don’t get paid.

By prioritizing its national health care system, Nicaragua became one of the first nations in the region to devise a robust COVID-19 response strategy, issuing a joint protocol with the Pan-American Health Organization (the Americas branch of the World Health Organization) on Feb. 9, 2020. Thus, its 36,000 health care workers received training on dealing with the virus before the first case appeared.