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A dozen corpses, wrapped in plastic bags for days, are piled on top of each other in a room that appears to be a morgue.
The video, which does not last more than 20 seconds, was recorded in the municipal morgue of Iquitos, the capital of the Loreto region, in northern Peru, which due to the dramatic increase in deaths due to the coronavirus pandemic in the last days it is totally overwhelmed.
“The morgue has the capacity to cremate between two and four bodies per day. Between yesterday and today more than eight bodies arrived, which overflowed the capacity of the place, “the Governor of Loreto told BBC Mundo, Elisban Ochoa Sosa.
And this occurs when the figures show that Peru – due, among other things, to an increase in medical tests for the virus – has more than 15.000 infections confirmed and 500 deceased, what they place him as the third country in Latin America with the highest number of cases, only behind Brazil and Ecuador.
In Peru more than 30 days ago a general quarantine was declared to reduce the spread of the virus.
And in Loreto, the largest province in the country and with a population of 830,000 inhabitants, the pandemic has overwhelmed hospitals.
Patients in corridors
Despite the fact that the authorities indicated that they are taking measures to alleviate the municipal morgue with the adaptation of a mass grave in the local cemetery, the doctors attending to the emergency in the province indicate that the situation will worsen.
And there, another image that reveals the dimension of the crisis: photographs of patients who must be cared for in the corridors of the only two medical centers that Iquitos has for managing the pandemic.
“The two hospitals in Iquitos are overwhelmed. We have no place to attend to any other patient and that means that people are going to die in their homes, “Luis Leonardo Runciman tells BBC Mundo, dean of the College of Physicians of Peru in the Regional Iquitos.
Runciman confesses that he feels “helpless and frustrated” by not being able to provide care to those who need it.
“Even if we have oxygen, we don’t have manometers to install them. And while we do have respirators, we also don’t have nurses to handle them, ”says the dean.
“Add to that that we also have no way to diagnose covid-19, because we do not have enough molecular tests or [pruebas] fast to do it ”, he adds.
According to the regional government, only slightly more than 700 molecular tests and some 2,500 rapid tests were sent from Lima, “which is not enough to serve the entire population.”
Without water
As of this Thursday, the Loreto region had nearly 700 confirmed cases and 23 deaths, most of them in recent days.
The regional government, which is part of the same alliance of the national government, indicated that they had set up a piece of land in the municipality of San Juan Bautista where the bodies accumulated in the morgue will be taken after being cremated.
However, several Iquitos authorities denounced that the conditions are far from being ideal –despite the efforts of local governments and the central– to face a situation that they consider “will be worse in the coming weeks”.
According to the Peruvian newspaper Gestión, there the rate of infections to date is the second in the country only behind Lima, with 16.15 cases per 100,000 inhabitants.
Infrastructure conditions only aggravate the situation.
“In Iquitos we do not have a constant water supply” indicated the representative of the medical college.
“Here the drinking water comes five hours a day, in shifts. As that happens, they are telling people that they have to wash their hands several times with soap and water as the main way to prevent the disease.”
Runciman turned his attention to another crisis: that of the health personnel. So far, 80 infections have been confirmed among people caring for patients, of whom about half are doctors.
Appeal to students
The Regional Medical Directorate of Iquitos confirmed to BBC Mundo that they had to resort to students recently graduated from medical school – who have not yet received the diploma – in order to attend to the growing number of people who daily come to symptoms of the disease.
“We had several cases of contagion in the first wave because the doctors, although they adequately protected themselves from the patients, did not do so much when they were among them. And so the high number, “he told BBC Mundo Luis Minaya Leon, director of the Regional Health of Iquitos.
For Minaya, who believes that the isolation measures dictated by the central government have prevented the tragedy from being greater, the strategy should be different in a region like Loreto, whose capital Iquitos can only be accessed by river or by air.
“Most of the measures we know of are designed for urban settings, but the rural issue has not been considered. This is the largest region in the country, with a large percentage of the indigenous population, and the approach to treat this epidemic must be very different, ”he indicated.
“In addition to this crisis, we do not have medicines enough to care for patients. We are short of medicines that are vital for people infected with covid-19, ”he added.
Both Minaya and Runciman agree that it is necessary, at least, to increase the diagnostic capacity, in order to have a clearer picture of the scale of infections in Loreto.
“It is possible that there are ten times more cases than what we have confirmed and that means that if only 1% need intensive care We have no way of attending to them in our health centers, ”said the doctor.
“Crumbs”
From the field, Peruvian journalist Delcar Rosales confirmed to BBC Mundo that the situation is delicate in Iquitos, where patients have to be treated in corridors and the bodies of the deceased go days without being cared for.
“The problem is that hospital health personnel are scared. They do not know if they will be infected after the bodies have been there for several days and they already begin to smell bad, “he explained.
“And that can make the hospital a focus of infection.“
Rosales also indicated that the corridors of the medical centers are overflowing with patients who are waiting to be treated. “There are no more beds for them.”
Regional Governor Ochoa Sosa accepted that the situation is difficult, but assured that measures are being taken to prevent both the hospital and the morgue from collapsing.
“We have already arranged a territory near Iquitos so that the bodies, after being cremated and complying with all medical protocols, are buried there,” explained the local president.
“It should be clarified that not all the bodies are of people who died from covid-19,” said Ochoa Sosa, in dialogue with BBC Mundo.
He also noted that the number of beds available is being increased, to reach a total of 1,000.
“This is a region that borders three countries, it is the largest in Peru, with the largest indigenous population, and the national government helps us with a dropper. What we receive are crumbs, ”claimed the governor.
He noted that, despite various efforts, the greatest difficulty is diagnosing the rural population, which can only be accessed in many cases through rivers.
“We have not been able to reach them as they should because we do not have the resources to do it properly.“, said.
And he added: “It is a situation that has overwhelmed us here in Loreto.”
From Lima
Peru, after Brazil and Ecuador, is the country with the highest number of infections in the region.
Despite this, the case-fatality rate is among the lowest (just 2.7%), according to the national government.
According to the president of the nation, Martín Vizcarra, this is due to the fact that an effort has been made to increase the diagnostic examinations and therefore a greater total number of cases has been registered.
“So far more than 185,000 tests have been carried out in the country. Despite the efforts, we have counted 572 deaths, “said the president.
“But despite the fact that we have a level below the mortality rates that are registered in the world, the most important thing in the country is its people, it is the health of the Peruvians, it is the life of its population and that is why we extend the emergency situation for two weeks, ”said Vizcarra this Thursday.
BBC Mundo contacted spokesmen of the Peruvian Ministry of Health to talk about the situation in Iquitos, but it was not possible to obtain theirofficial statements so far the publication of isarticle.
The Minister of Health, Víctor Zamora, told the EFE agency that the mortality of the virus “is not only due to the violence with which it affects the most vulnerable people, but is also related to the organization of the health system itself”, traditionally lacking.
And he pointed out that the national government is focused on enabling more intensive care beds and acquiring about 300 mechanical ventilators, to add them to those produced by the Navy and the Catholic University.
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