VIRUS STRUGGLES, PAIN IN ECUADOR
Hospitals are turning away patients and bodies are being left on streets and in homes in Guayaquil, a virus hot spot in Ecuador as the pandemic spreads in Latin America.
Daniel Larrea died Monday after a week of high fever, struggling to breathe and steadily turning blue. Then a new nightmare began for his family. No one in their city on Ecuador’s Pacific coast would pick up his body.
“We wrapped him up in black plastic,” Larrea’s wife, Karina, said Wednesday. “He’s here in the living room.”
Hospitals are turning away patients and bodies are being left on streets and in homes for days in Guayaquil, a normally bustling city of 2.6 million that has become a hot spot in Latin America as the pandemic spreads.
The small South American nation has recorded 120 coronavirus deaths, but officials say there could be dozens more who died without ever being officially diagnosed — people such as Larrea, who had all the symptoms but never got tested. Nationwide, there were 3,160 cases confirmed on Thursday, likely a vast underestimate.
Meanwhile, untold numbers of Ecuadorians are dying of unrelated diseases that can’t be treated because hospitals are overwhelmed.
It’s not just medical services at a breaking point. Morgues, funeral homes and all related services for the dead are over capacity. In recent days, macabre images and pleas from families have appeared on social media showing dead loved ones wrapped in plastic or cloth, waiting for them to be taken away. Television crews have captured images of bodies and coffins left on sidewalks.
“It’s a desperate smell,” said Merwin Teran, 61, the owner of a Guayaquil funeral home, who said he saw 50 dead in one morgue alone.
Doctors say there aren’t enough tests in the country, making it harder to identify and isolate the sick to try to stop the spread of COVID-19 as well as too few hospital beds and ventilators.
“We are seeing a situation quite similar to that of Italy,” said Dr. Mireya Rodas, a lung specialist at a Guayaquil hospital who has tested positive.
Ecuador identified its first case of COVID-19 on Feb. 29 — a 71-year-old woman who had traveled from Spain — making it one of the first Latin American countries to confirm the arrival of the disease.
Medical experts fear that the disaster brewing in Guayaquil may offer a frightening glimpse of what awaits the region in coming months.
“More contagion, more mortality,” said Enrique Acosta, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic research
in Germany. “They closely intertwined.”
Acosta is among a group of policy experts urging Latin American governments to quickly ramp up testing. They note that in countries such as Singapore and South Korea, where the virus has been more quickly contained, testing was widespread. But that is not the case in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Medical professionals believe the true number of coronavirus cases in Ecuador could be five times the official count or higher.
Teran, the funeral home owner, said he went to a cemetery Tuesday where workers usually inter about 30 people per day, but 149 bodies were awaiting burial or cremation.
He said many funeral homes are not operating, while those that are have to send workers to pick up bodies without adequate protection. By law, he said, funeral homes can’t pick up bodies until a doctor has signed off on a cause of death. But because so many physicians are treating patients, bodies are accumulating in morgues, creating a backlog.
Not all of the dead are dying from the coronavirus — which for most people, causes only mild to moderate symptoms, like a fever and cough. But for others, particularly older adults and those with other health problems, it can lead to pneumonia and death.
Carmen Suarez, 71, died at her home during the weekend in Guayaquil from what the family believes
are was kidney failure. Relatives tried to find a hospital that would accept her as her legs grew increasingly swollen, but they were told no beds were available and that taking her to a hospital would be risky anyway because
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Yof the coronavirus.
By Tuesday, the family had spent three days waiting for her body to be taken away. They eventually called a funeral home worker who brought a coffin and embalmed her body, which was still waiting on the family’s patio.
“It’s catastrophic what is happening in Guayaquil,” said Byron Moreira, 36, her son-in-law. “I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy.”
Esteban Ortiz, a public health specialist, said in the province of Guayas, which includes Guayaquil and where 70% of the country’s virus cases are, only about 175 ventilators are likely available.
On Thursday, 225 people were hospitalized.
“We’re not giving them a chance,” Ortiz said.