Bodies of Covid-19 victims pile up in streets of Ecuador as residents beg authorities for help
A worker sprays disinfectant on a vehicle carrying a coffin lined up to enter a cemetery, in Guayaquil, Ecuador April 2, 2020. © Reuters / Vicente Gaibor del Pino
As the coronavirus pandemic rips through Ecuador, some cities are struggling to cope with a deluge of fatalities, pushing residents to make harrowing pleas for help as the bodies of loved ones accumulate in the streets.
The port city of Guayaquil, around 260 miles south of the capital, Quito, has been hit especially hard in the outbreak, leaving hospitals and morgues utterly overwhelmed in a flood of new patients and deaths. With local authorities unable to keep up with the influx of casualties, President Lenin Moreno has created a task force to tackle the problem, tapping Jorge Wated, board chairman at BanEcuador – a self-described “public development bank” – to lead the effort.
Seeking to ramp up the collection of bodies, Wated has allowed funeral homes to sidestep a nationwide curfew to work into the night to gather the deceased, and has dispatched teams of soldiers and police to pick up corpses from homes, hospitals and even streets around the city.
The efforts have still fallen short, however, sending countless citizens to social media to make desperate pleas for help, appealing directly to Wated through his Twitter account, where he shares frequent updates on the grim task at hand.
“Jorge. I have a case. Deceased going for 3 days. Already decomposed. Please… contact me,” another man wrote.
Left with few other options, social media appears to be the last recourse for many residents, with some of Wated’s tweets garnering dozens of similar urgent requests.
On Monday my grandmother passed away, we do not know where else to call to remove the body and [need help] with the death certificate.
Yet another appeal reads: “Dear Jorge Wated, a friend without Twitter asks for help, her brother died today 4 pm… and they still do not coordinate the removal of the corpse.”
Jorge Wated Reshuan@JorgeWated
Though Ecuador has reported only around 3,300 infections and 145 fatalities in its Covid-19 outbreak – over 100 of them in Guayaquil – the official disease and death tolls depend on the number of tests administered, and Ecuador has faced a shortage of test kits, leaving health officials unable to verify cases and add them to official tallies.
