The Guardian hyperventilates as follows regarding Ecuador.
‘They’re leaving us to die’: Ecuadorians’ plead for help as virus blazes deadly trail
Dead bodies kept in homes or dumped on roadsides as authorities and hospitals are overwhelmed by Covid-19 in Andean nation’s second city
It has been three days since Reynaldo Barrezueta passed away at his home in Ecuador’s biggest city – and still his body lies in a coffin on the sitting room floor.
“The authorities are just leaving us to die,” said his son, Eduardo Javier Barrezueta Chávez, who has spent the last 72 hours pleading with authorities remove his father’s corpse – so far to no avail.
Barrezueta is not alone. In recent days the coronavirus has swept into Guayaquil with deadly force, overwhelming local authorities, funeral homes and hospitals and leaving families such as his facing unthinkable horrors.
Photographs and video footage emerging from this crisis-stricken coastal city look like images from the aftermath of a natural disaster: bodies wrapped in sheets and dumped on the roadside or outside houses; desperate families begging for help after being forced to keep their loved-ones corpses at home for days in temperatures of more than 30C.
Good grief!! What has gone terribly wrong in Ecuador? Let us head over to worldometers for some stats regarding this terrible situation.
Total deaths: 172
Deaths over the last 5 days in chronological order: 4, 17, 19, 22, 25.
Does that seem like something that would overwhelm a country of 17.3M people? In 2013, the last year for which the records are available, Ecuador recorded 3,164 deaths annually due to traffic accidents. That is an average of 8.7 deaths/day due to traffic accidents.
