A week after the February 7 elections, it was carnival in Ecuador. “There were lots of people in the streets, sometimes without a mask, says Dr Grace Navarrete, professor of public health at the University of Guayaquil. How can we explain that people did not remember the tragedy we have experienced? “
The images of corpses packed in plastic bags lying on the sidewalks of Guayaquil, in February 2020, had nevertheless gone around the world. The hospital and funeral services in this city of 2.7 million people were overwhelmed. “We have no more room, neither for the living nor for the dead, declared the mayor, Cynthia Viteri, on April 20, 2020. Our city has been bombed. “
One year later, Ecuador has 269,860 cases of Covid-19 and has passed the 15,000 death mark. But this figure is probably much lower than the reality: official statistics show an excess mortality of 40,000 people in 2020 at the national level.
Lack of planning
“The pandemic has exposed the structural weaknesses of our health system”, explains Dr. Fernando Sacoto, president of the Ecuadorian Society of Public Health. Lack of long-term planning, disarticulation of operators, incompetence of decision-makers, politicization of appointments and corruption, the list of evils is long. The budget cuts and massive reductions in nursing staff implemented by the government of Lenin Moreno, which, elected in 2017 under a socialist label, has turned to the right, obviously did not help anything.
After a few months of calm between September and December 2020, the intensive care units (ICU) in the capital, Quito, are back in full swing. 1er February, the city’s health services reported that 83 people were “Waiting for ICU”. Mr. Sacoto points out that“A waiting list for intensive care is nonsense”. The arrival of new variants of the virus raises fears of a new explosion in the capital. On the basis of the regional excess mortality, epidemiologist Alberto Naravez estimates that “Nearly 60% of the population of the province of Guayaquil could have been contaminated there”.
“Public health policy has historically been neglected”, continues the doctor, recalling that, since 1992, no minister of health has remained the time of a presidential mandate. The current minister, Juan Carlos Zevallos, has multiplied the blunders: at the start of the pandemic, he promised his fellow citizens rapid collective immunity; on January 21, he claimed that massive testing is unnecessary. In the hot seat for having his 87-year-old mother vaccinated as a priority, Mr. Zavallos has been silent for three weeks.
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