How Did Ecuador Become the Epicenter of COVID-19 in Latin America?
Ecuador is a nation that sits on the equator on the west side of South America. According to Johns Hopkins University, this tiny country, with a population of less than 20 million, has identified approximately 7,466 cases of COVID-19 as of this week.
Ecuador's president Lenin Moreno admitted, however, that the actual figures would have been much higher, stating that insufficient screening has made it difficult to estimate the total sum of those infected by the virus.
Authorities reportedly retrieved nearly 800 bodies from residences in Guayaquil, as coronavirus continues to take its effect on emergency services, clinics, and burial parlors of the Ecuadorian capital.
Bodies have been left on the streets, abandoned. Most of the emergency personnel are so overloaded that people need to wait four days for corpses to be extracted from residences.
Jorge Wated, the head of the police and military team formed by the state three weeks ago to quickly bring down the turmoil, had this to say: "The number we have collected with the task force from people's homes exceeded 700 people."
Emergency cemeteries constructed in Ecuador
This week, as families were waiting to have an opportunity to bury their deceased loved ones, a significant number of vehicles bearing caskets were waiting outside the private cemeteries around the town. The epidemic overloaded hospitals as well as emergency rooms, and many people kept dead bodies for days inside their households.
In order to tackle the lack of burial grounds, as the novel coronavirus strikes the country hard, Ecuador is planning an immediate burial site donated by the private cemetery in Guayaquil, the biggest city in the country.
Before graves were constructed last week, the government started keeping coronavirus victims' corpses in large refrigerated containers as they intend to bury about 100 individuals per day at the cemetery in northern Guayaquil, which has the capacity for about 2,000 plots.
With the potential to manage about 12,000 plots, Guayaquil City has also announced that it plans to construct two public graveyards.
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Ecuador's debt to China
Ecuador's coronavirus crisis is increasing the pressure for the president to think of bailing towards the $17 billion debt and to commit more funds to battle an outbreak that has killed and scattered corpses in the streets of the nation's largest city.
Since 2008, when it announced a suspension on payments on several bonds, this oil-exporting nation has had a strained relationship with the creditors.
That has rendered Ecuador blocked for six years from the debt markets, whereas Correa printed billions of dollars of oil-for-loan transactions with China.
According to President Moreno, raising finances to counter the virus may clash against creditors' attempts to pay and implement drastic steps to cover a growing budgetary deficit.
He had added that Ecuador would not default and therefore, will pay $3 billion in expenditures from multilateral organizations and to China. However, the state has particular commitments for the $580 million.
The CONAIE federation of indigenous nations, which led last year's protests against austerity measures, said in a statement had this to say: "Ecuador paid foreign debts and neglected resources for public health, now they want to loot Ecuadoreans' wallets once more."
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