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April 02, 2020In Ecuador, which with its 2,748 cases of new coronavirus per 16.6 million inhabitants is among the countries not only of Latin America, but also as a percentage of the world where the highest number of infections is recorded, it is difficult to bury the dead. Army and police have collected at least 150 bodies from streets and houses in the port city of Guayaquil. For the government, the risk is to reach a death toll of 3,500 only in the city and surrounding province.
About two thirds of the victims are concentrated in the province of Guayas, whose capital Guayaquil is among the cities most dramatically affected by the health emergency. The pain of losing loved ones is exacerbated by the impossibility of burying the dead: due to the unavailability of the funeral homes, overwhelmed by the high number of deaths and the concern for contagion, as well as by the long evening curfew (15 hours), many families to keep the corpses in the house abandon them. The mayor of the city, Cynthia Viteri, is in solitary confinement at home, infected by Covid-19, but is also a spokesman for the protests of citizens who ask to recover the corpses from homes and hospitals, where they are often left by families for days and days. Some videos of corpses abandoned in black sacks for garbage have however proved to be false, circulated on social networks by families exasperated also by the difficulties in obtaining death certificates, just to attract the attention of the authorities on the matter. The government spokesman apologized for a message broadcast on state television. He said that mortuary workers were unable to keep up with the burial of the dead due to a curfew imposed under the pandemic. "We acknowledge any mistakes and apologize to those who have had to wait days to take their loved ones away," explained Jorge Wated. "Unfortunately medical experts estimate that deaths from Covid-19 in the past few months will reach between 2,500 and 3,500 in the Guayas province alone, and we are preparing for this," he added.