Over the last few days, several were wrapped in plastic and left on the streets. Others have lain unclaimed in hospitals and clinics that have been overwhelmed by infections. The city morgue is full.
The majority of the dead are believed to be victims of the virus, but nobody can say for sure how many. There has been little testing.
The country has confirmed 2,700 infections and 93 deaths — 60 of them in Guayaquil and its immediate surroundings. But municipal officials there said they have recovered at least 400 bodies in recent days.
That was an early indication that Ecuador simply wasn't able to properly account for deaths related to coronavirus. The situation has gotten even worse since that point. The Guardian on April 17 reported:
Since the beginning of March six weeks ago, 10,939 people have died in Guayas province, which includes Ecuador’s largest city, Guayaquil, according to figures released late on Thursday.
The region would usually see about 3,000 deaths in a six-week period, with the new figures suggesting that the local death rate has almost quadrupled.
In Ecuador as a whole, coronavirus has been confirmed as the cause of only 421 deaths, and is suspected in a further 675, but interior minister María Paula Romo said the true number was probably much higher.
The New York Times reported on April 23:
The death toll in Ecuador during the outbreak was 15 times higher than the official number of Covid-19 deaths reported by the government, according to an analysis of mortality data by The New York Times.
. . . A staggering number of people — about 7,600 more this year — died in Ecuador from March 1 to April 15 than the average in recent years, according to an analysis of official death registration data by The Times.
That spike stands in stark contrast to the number of deaths that the government has officially attributed to the coronavirus: 503 people by April 15.
The article goes on to state that the national lockdown that was ordered in mid-March may finally be slowing down deaths in the country, but that on the other hand businesses want to re-open. France 24 reports on this topic:
Now, as it seeks urgent external financing and renegotiation of external debt, Ecuador wants productive and commercial sectors to gradually resume work, following protocols to limit contagion and conserve capacity at public hospitals.
"It is an economic reopening plan that requires more discipline than the previous stage," Minister Maria Paula Romo told reporters.
"Now we are going to have to organize ourselves to get out, any disorder in this next stage could provoke a spike in infections," the minister added, without elaborating.
Now in California, Governor Newsom put together a 6 point plan to lift restrictions in the state. Two of those points really caught my attention. First, ability to test, track and isolate. Second, have developed therapeutics for those who get infected after the lifting of restrictions.What are the chances that Ecuador has the ability to accomplish the first point? The New York Times just estimated that deaths in the country are 15x what is reported. If the deaths are around 7,600 and lets assume a 1% CFR percentage, there are at least 76,000 infections in the country. In reality, there are probably plenty more. As of Friday, Worldometer has the total cases at 22,719. There is some serious under-counting going on. So even if the New York Times argue that deaths are slowing down in the country, there are likely plenty of unknown infections in the country. As to the second point, well, I don't think any country has developed therapeutics.
Ecuador unlikely can hit the goals that California has set. If they do re-open now, they are likely to see a continued increase in infections and deaths though hopefully at a more manageable level. The country likely has no option but to open their economy up. Oil represents about 29% of their exports. And I think everyone knows how oil prices have fallen due to this virus. Their economic must be feeling the impacts of this. People do need to survive.
The other thought is: is Ecuador really the only nation in South America that is seriously under counting infections and deaths? Probably not.
Also, if wealthier nations eventually get their arms around the virus and poorer countries can't, will these countries just face isolation until a vaccine is developed and is readily available in perhaps 18 months if not longer for the whole globe? And what implications might that have on the globe?
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