At least 16 people have died in a remote area of Peru, after drinking adulterated alcoholic drinks that they believed "prevent" the infection with the new Coronavirus.
And the Peruvian news agency "Andina" said on Friday that the incident occurred on the twenty-eighth of last March.
Andina quoted health authorities in the Huancavelica region, 400 kilometers southeast of the capital Lima, as saying, "These patients were admitted to Larkai Hospital on March 28 after they drank alcohol in order to prevent infection with the Corona virus, which resulted in the death of 16 people."
The agency said that the police "confiscated the alcoholic drinks" that it was selling "to an institution of dubious reputation," according to AFP.
The regional government indicated that "the symptoms that appeared among the dead were symptoms of poisoning."
It is noteworthy that, since March 16, the Peruvian authorities imposed mandatory isolation measures and prevented nightly movements, in an attempt to curb the spread of the Covid-19 epidemic that has so far affected 1,595 people in the country and led to the death of 61 others, according to official figures.