If we only focus on the tragedy, we lose sight of the many good and positive things that are happening. Yesterday, because I have worried I may never be able to get out of quarantine, I began the search for reasons to have hope…….
For me this video was the first sign of honesty with regards to information about the virus. This man is on the right track, in my opinion, to discovering the most important data needed to understand if locking down our countries is the best solution. This interview was done in March, the link for the article below talks about him fulfilling the study he describes in the video. This man has moved mountains, so to speak to get vital information so quickly about the virus and I find I just really like him. Listening to him yesterday, I felt there was reason to be positive, so to me it was important to share it. Finding this video led me to the breathing video I posted yesterday, which was incredibly beneficial for me as well. One step leads to another, then another as we look for the answers…….
As Bodies Accumulate, So Do Fears of a High Coronavirus Toll in Ecuador
In two weeks, 1,900 bodies were collected from Guayaquil’s hospitals and homes for burial, a fivefold increase in the city’s usual mortality rate, according to Ecuador’s government.
By José María León Cabrera and Anatoly Kurmanaev
- April 14, 2020
QUITO, Ecuador — Guayaquil, Ecuador’s business capital, has been the site of Latin America’s most aggressive outbreak of coronavirus, overwhelming its hospitals and burial system and causing bodies to be left in the streets.
Now, as authorities begin to grapple with the scale of the crisis, they have reason to believe that the toll for the province that includes Guayaquil is likely many times larger than the official government figure of 173 dead. The numbers are skewed because only those who test positive — dead or alive — are counted as coronavirus victims.
The usually bustling port city of about three million had about 1,500 more deaths in March than it did in the same month in 2019, Guayaquil’s mayor, Cynthia Viteri, said in an interview Monday.
By The New York Times
The swelling mortality offers a glimpse at the full cost of the virus, underlining both the pitfalls of limited testing and the burden it has placed on an overstretched health care system, Ms. Viteri said.
“They are not only dying from Covid,” she said, using the name of the virus-borne disease. “People with diabetes, hypertension, heart disease are dying from lack of medical attention, because the hospitals are saturated with the critically ill, because there aren’t places where women can give birth without getting infected.”
The virus has stunned Ecuador’s commercial hub, leaving authorities struggling to cope with dead bodies.
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In the past two weeks, the government’s emergency team collected or authorized the burial of nearly 1,900 bodies from Guayaquil’s hospitals and homes — a fivefold increase in the city’s usual rate, according to Ecuador’s government.
To combat the spread of the virus, the city is resorting to some of the strictest quarantine measures in Latin America.
Security forces on Tuesday began cordoning off contagion hot spots for up to three days at a time while medics looked door to door for potential cases and sanitary workers disinfected public spaces.
Ms. Viteri, the mayor, said movement to and from the hard-hit neighborhoods, located mostly in the city’s poor periphery, will be completely cut off. City authorities will provide residents with food while the operation lasts.
Compliance with the lockdown measures in Guayaquil has been patchy until now because many of the city’s poor continued going to work or looking for food.
“The situation isn’t grave — it’s extremely grave,” Ms. Viteri said. “And we still haven’t reached a high point of infections in Guayaquil.”
Ms. Viteri said she had to resort to tough lockdown measures and door-to-door checks because of severe shortages of test kits and other medical materials.
The most recent batch of test kits, ordered by the city last month, will not arrive until mid-May — too late to make a difference for many who will get sick, she said.
The relatively late arrival of coronavirus in Latin America has put the region last in line for critical medical supplies, whose stocks are being depleted by nations fighting a more advanced stage of contagion.
The World Health Organization said it will send 1.5 million additional coronavirus test kits to nations in North and South America next week.
“We’re doing everything within our possibilities, given the complexity of the current market,” to provide Latin American countries with critical supplies, Dr. Sylvain Aldighieri, the organization’s regional emergency response manager, told reporters Tuesday.
Ecuador’s response to the coronavirus is complicated by a deteriorating economy. The International Monetary Fund forecasts the country will see the deepest recession in the continent this year, after Venezuela.
The outlook worsened last week, when mudslides damaged Ecuador’s two main oil pipelines, shutting off most of its crude exports for weeks. The outage deprived the country of its biggest source of revenue at a crucial moment and polluted several rivers used by Indigenous communities.
Facing default, the government has unveiled an ambitious fund-raising plan that includes new taxes on individuals and companies and a 50 percent salary cut for top government officials.
The $800 million the government hopes to raise from the plan, however, is a fraction of the $4.3 billion in oil revenues the country is expected to lose this year because of the falling oil prices and tax revenues — not to mention the billions in losses that economists expect will follow from quarantine measures to fight the pandemic.
Isayen Herrera contributed reporting from Caracas, Venezuela.
I believe it is important to look at statistics more objectively. We hear there have been a certain number of deaths each day and assume they are all because of the virus. Well in a round about way they are, but as this article states many deaths were due to lack of medical attention, not the virus. Many ignore the quarantine because they simply cannot afford to stay home. The tragedy is, far too many will die from the consequences of the quarantine. And to make matters worse there was also an oil spill caused by a mudslide. Several rivers have been polluted……
Really, how does one describe this situation in plain words? Countries with such little economic power have no way to defend themselves in such a difficult situation. There is much more suffering to come, and I am worried about the people of Ecuador. For this reason, because the power of positive thoughts are great importance, I have also included the statistics from South Korea. It is important to see how many have recovered from the virus and who are now hopefully immune if Dr. Bhattacharya is correct in his thinking. He states that the blood from those who have recovered may also cure those battling the virus, so I do hope he is correct.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/south-korea/
The next article explains how South Korea dealt with the virus without shutting the country down. I think we can learn from them and should be more prepared in the future.