It then shut down all schools, shut down OSRS gold the borders between Venezuela as well as neighboring countries and placed six states as well as Caracas as quarantine. Marinez was stuck in transit and then sheltered at his uncle's home in a city more than 50 miles away from the capital.

In the space of two weeks, Marinez came back to Maracaibo, "without any money in my pockets," he said. He tried to find work but could not find the market for jobs destroyed by the pandemic--and a yearslong economic recession.

Ten years earlier, Venezuela, a petrostate under the administration of Hugo Chavez, witnessed a bust in oil prices. In 2017, the cost for a barrel plunged to almost $50 from a record high that was more than $100 along with The U.S. instituted wide-ranging sanctions against Venezuela's repressive government.

"When oil prices started to drop in the early 2000s, there was not enough funds to import goods," said Alejandro Velasco Professor at New York University who specializes in Venezuelan politics, during an interview by phone. "As as a result the country was left with no money really to support the economy."

Venezuela's coffers were already empty after the country spent its most recent oil windfall on social programs like subsidised health care, food in addition to literacy initiatives. Chavez also removed perceived dissidents from the oil industry following an attempted coup d'état, that affected production.

And widespread corruption in government further weakened the economy, according to Paul Angelo, a fellow at the Council for Foreign Relations who is an expert in cheap OSRS GP Latin American politics.