Ecuador: Nowhere To Rest

ECUADOR

Nowhere to Rest

The coronavirus is creating few tragedies worse than Ecuador’s.

A few weeks ago, Eduardo Javier Barrezueta Chávez told the Guardian that authorities in the city of Guayaquil were leaving the dead body of his father and others in the street. In temperatures higher than 86 degrees, their lack of action was threatening to kick off a second public health crisis during the pandemic.

Little has changed since then.

The virus has hit Guayaquil worse than anywhere else in Latin America, reported the New York Times. Hospitals and other services are overwhelmed. The country’s system of funeral homes and mortuaries has collapsed. There is a shortage of coffins.

“They are not only dying from (COVID-19),” said Mayor Cynthia Viteri. “People with diabetes, hypertension, heart disease are dying from a lack of medical attention because the hospitals are saturated with the critically ill – there aren’t places where women can give birth without getting infected.”

Cars line up outside emergency cemeteries to bury their dead, reported Reuters. Some keep the bodies of their loved ones in their homes for days. That could potentially spread the virus, according to a study on corpses infecting medical examiners in Thailand. An Ecuadoran reporter spoke to the Committee to Protect Journalists about how her cousin bought formaldehyde to cover up the smell of her late uncle’s body in their living room.

Others have taken to burying their loved ones in public parks, not only because of a lack of space but due to financial constraints, VICE News reported. The government has promised to bury the dead individually but progress has been slow.

Indigenous folks who can leave Guayaquil, the country’s largest city and its financial center, are flocking to their remote villages in the Amazon, Al Jazeera wrote. Others are self-isolating to avoid spreading the virus to their families.

Making matters worse, as Bloomberg explained, are Ecuador’s “serious co-morbidities” of foreign debt, plunging oil prices, inveterate poverty and political polarization. The country uses the US dollar, too. The greenback keeps the economy stable in turbulent times but ties the hands of policymakers who might print money to keep the economy going during crises.

The pandemic, meanwhile, has forced mining and other important industries to produce less when Ecuador desperately needs foreign cash.

And Ecuador is only at the beginning.

W