(Dan Tri) – Doctors working on the front lines of the anti-epidemic in Ecuador have revealed the horrifying scenes they face every day when the health system is at risk of collapse due to the Covid-19 epidemic.
Relatives carry the coffin of a victim who died of Covid-19 at a cemetery in Guayaquil.
At a hospital in Guayaquil city, where it was overloaded with Covid-19 patients, medical staff had to pile up bodies in bathrooms because the morgues had no more space.
At another hospital, a medical staff member said doctors were forced to find a way to wrap and store bodies so that the beds on which the patients had died could be reused.
According to Worldometers statistics, Ecuador has so far recorded more than 24,200 infections and more than 870 deaths from Covid-19.
With 17.6 million people, Ecuador is the 8th most populous country in Latin America.
Anarchy
Medical staff drag a body through a freezer outside Teodoro Maldonado Carbo hospital in Guayaquil.
The `shocking` photos of bodies scattered on the streets of Ecuador that caused a `storm` in March and April have proven the warning that the Covid-19 pandemic is completely capable of hitting people.
When a health emergency broke out in Ecuador in March, each nurse had to care for 30 patients in 24 hours.
“There are a lot of people hospitalized… They died in our hands,” said a nurse working at a hospital in Guayaquil, adding that other patients had to be discharged or transferred to other facilities “to free up the entire population.”
“They switched the anesthesia equipment in the operating room to replace it with a ventilator,” the nurse in Guayaquil added.
Overcrowding occurs not only in hospitals, but also in morgues.
`Morgue staff don’t accept any more bodies, so many times we have to wrap the bodies and store them in bathrooms,` the nurse said.
Only when the number of bodies was `piled up to 6 or 7 rows high` did morgue staff come to `collect` and take away.
Another nurse also shared about the chaotic situation at the hospital.
`There were many bodies in the bathrooms, many bodies lying on the floor, many dead people placed on chairs,` the nurse said.
Guayaquil’s health system collapsed under the pressure of the Covid-19 epidemic and led to catastrophic chain reactions.
Data are inconsistent
The body lies on the sidewalk in Guayaquil.
According to Tribune News Service, in the first half of April, Guayas province recorded 6,700 deaths, three times higher than the average monthly number of deaths.
In Guayaquil city alone, the capital of Guayas province, the actual number of deaths from Covid-19 in March and April was estimated to reach 7,000 people.
The difference between the numbers shows that the actual number of deaths from Covid-19 in Ecuador is much higher than the more than 800 officially confirmed cases nationwide.
Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno once admitted that the number of deaths from Covid-19 officially recorded in Ecuador is lower than the actual number.
“The actual numbers are much higher than what the government wants to admit,” said Juan Jose Illingworth, an Ecuadorian mathematician and journalist.
According to Illingworth’s analytical data, Guayaquil city recorded about 6,948 deaths related to Covid-19 between March 21 and April 22, equivalent to more than 217 deaths a day.
Also according to Illingworth, the peak of the crisis was on April 6 when the number of deaths related to Covid-19 increased to 460 people, putting pressure on hospitals, morgues and funeral homes.
Illingworth predicted Guayaquil suffered casualties “equivalent to 10 earthquakes.”
Bodies pile up
Cardboard boxes are used as coffins in Ecuador.
A 28-year-old doctor at a hospital in Guayaquil also revealed a horrifying picture of the health system during the outbreak crisis in the Latin American country.
“The bodies were lying in the hallway of the emergency room because the morgue was full,” the doctor said, saying there were “20-25 bodies” waiting to be taken away.
`Collecting, wrapping and storing the body so we can disinfect the hospital bed for the next patient depends entirely on us,` the doctor added.
Refrigerated containers were delivered to the hospital to store the bodies, some of which were stored for up to 10 days.
According to AFP, Guayaquil city officials said earlier this month that they had received 1,000 cardboard boxes donated by local manufacturers and distributed to two funeral homes.
The Ecuadorian government even had to mobilize the army to collect hundreds of bodies on the streets and in apartments, after staff at the morgues were not `strong enough` to work due to the large number of bodies.
Last week, the number of daily deaths in Ecuador decreased.
Success
According to AFP, Tribune
Nick John