Taj and Peru: – – First and green

– We suffer. Every day there are five, six, seven masses of the dead. All about illness and death, the despair of Catholic priest Altamirano Guevara Reuters.

The small town of 40,000 is in crisis. Reuters news agency reported that the city was hit by the worst outbreak of Corona ever. They write that the city is on high alert for the country “with a few other cities, all of which are far from the major cities.

– The hospital collapsed. This is the worst moment. Daniel Idrogo, general secretary of the local hospital, told Reuters that many people had died.

You have flesh and blood

The city is located in the Peruvian hinterland, with poor communications. The nearest hospital intensive care unit is a three-hour drive away.

According to Reuters, relatives of patients are standing outside the local hospital and praying for better care for their loved ones. Chances of obtaining oxygen assistance should be small, and intensive care units non-existent.

– I tried this with my flesh and blood because my sister died of corona. Several colleagues and neighbors have also died, explains Betty Campos Ochoa to Reuters, who herself works at the small local Chota Hospital.

died without treatment

The failing health care system has not been able to handle the crisis. The country has also imposed a curfew, so far without being able to reduce infections.

The death toll in the city is still unclear.

Many patients are said to have died without treatment, and the number of deaths due to COVID-19 is also underestimated.

“Countries with good economies have managed to record most of the corona deaths because they have good access to testing,” epidemiologist Matteo Prochazka told Reuters, who was himself part of the country’s assessment of the management of corona.

It is estimated that 1 in 200 Peruvians die from COVID-19. Much of it is due to the overcrowded healthcare system and poor access to ventilators and oxygen tanks. The shortage drove up prices, and many families drowned.

In the Cajamarca region where Chota is located, there are only three hospitals with intensive care units, despite its population of over a million. This is according to figures from local health authorities.

– Doctors say we need a respirator, but there is nothing available in Shota, which is worrying. There is no solution for us, the mother of Enrique Peralta Linares, who was admitted to Chota Hospital with coronavirus, is desperate, told Reuters.

The worst thing

While infection rates in many European countries are declining, the whole of Peru is experiencing a wave of infection, and it is not alone in South America.

Uruguay and Paraguay currently top the statistics for the highest number of deaths per capita. Argentina has 80,000 deaths and is battling a new wave, Brazil approaches 470,000 deaths, while infections are also spreading rapidly in Bolivia and Colombia.

Foreign tourists – no thanks

But at the top of the list of individual deaths comes Peru, after the country compared the number of deaths during the Corona period with previous periods.

Worse than Brazil and India, which have been hit hard by the pandemic.

Brazil’s healthcare system has always been on its knees, and President Jair Bolsonaro has been largely blamed, After refusing to close the country.

In India, a procession to bathe in the Ganges during a festival in April was called “the largest super-spreading event in the history of the epidemic”.