Lima (AFP)

Cylinders of all sizes lined up on the sidewalk in front of a Peruvian store: a hundred people, some since dawn, line up to buy oxygen that would keep their loved ones with Covid-19 alive.

"We are patient to find a little oxygen, because a sick person, someone in our family in a serious condition, needs it every day", explains to AFP Guillermo Arias, 53 years old, outside of 'a store in the port city of Callao, near Lima.

At the same time, in front of the door of the Dos de Mayo hospital in Lima, other people are looking for the precious gas.

Peru is facing a shortage of oxygen due to the pandemic. The government says it will import it and has declared that it is now considered a "strategic health resource whose medical use has priority over industrial use".

According to Social Security (Essalud), which manages 400 hospitals and practices, demand has increased fivefold since the start of the health crisis.

"The patients have run out of oxygen inside (the hospital), I had to buy two balloons so that my father could be transferred there," said Olga Bravo, 44.

"We can not find oxygen, I am especially worried about my mother, because it will take a lot and the hospital does not have any more", laments Lady Savalla, 35 years.

The shortage first hit settlements in the Peruvian Amazon, then reached the capital Lima and the nearby port of Callao, where 10 of the 33 million Peruvians live.

The prices have exploded: "Before, it cost 30 sol (nine dollars) per cubic meter, now it's 60 sol (18 dollars). How to do it? If people run out of oxygen, they die" , wonders Jorge Contreras, whose loved one is sick.

- 10,000 people hospitalized -

With more than 183,198, including 5,301 deaths, according to the latest official figures for Thursday evening, Peru is the second country in Latin America in number of infected, after Brazil.

More than 9,000 patients with the new coronavirus are currently hospitalized, putting the healthcare system on the brink of breakdown.

"The lack of oxygen is a latent risk in several regions", not only in Lima, explains to AFP the head of the college of doctors in the Chiclayo region (north), Manuel Soria.

In the Amazon region of Loreto (north), there is now oxygen in Iquitos, the regional capital, but the remote areas located in the heart of the jungle have not been replenished.

"'We need oxygen because we need to get it to the peripheral areas, where there are big needs. We need to install factories to supply the population, but the size of the region makes it difficult transport, "said regional health manager Carlos Calampa to AFP.

"Coronavirus patients have the oxygen that is (normally) given only to critically ill patients who have gone through high-risk operations. There are five times as many, it's hyperinflation because the patients need very high flow oxygen, "said Essalud spokesperson César Chaname on RPP radio.

"We are going to set up a plan, as we did with the drugs (in May to avoid the rise in prices), we will do it with oxygen", promised the Minister of Health, Victor Zamora.

© 2020 AFP