RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Since Wednesday,August 26th, Peru has been leading the statistics for the highest number of deaths per inhabitant. A total of 858 people per million inhabitants died of SARS-CoV since March – almost one of every thousand.
This places the South American country ahead of Belgium, where 855 people per million have succumbed to the disease, followed by Spain (620), Great Britain (610), and Italy (587). In Latin America, Chile (578) and Brazil (558) rank second and third.
A total of 28,000 of the approximately 33 million Peruvians have already died of Covid-19 – half of them in the metropolitan region of Lima with its ten million inhabitants. The so-called excess mortality in the period since March has reached 65,000.
Whether this figure is directly related to the virus or to the general overloading of the health system remains unclear and is being investigated by the Ministry of Health.
In parallel, a deep economic crisis is looming on the horizon: In the second quarter, Peru’s economy slumped by 30 percent compared to the year before – also a global peak. Forty percent of all formal jobs have been lost, leading to an increase in the informal sector, which already accounted for 70 percent of all employees before the crisis.
“Economic activity reached its lowest point in April and recovered slowly in May and June, but remains far below pre-crisis levels,” says economist Felipe Hernandez. “A rebound in global demand and high copper and gold prices should provide some relief, but policymakers need to take more effective stimulus measures.”
In fact, the government of President Martín Vizcarra is focusing on reactivating the mining sector to boost the economy. To this end, environmental and human rights standards will be lowered. This strategy has recently led to a renewed increase in social conflicts in the mining regions, which hardly benefit economically and suffer from high environmental pollution.
In the midst of this crisis, doctors and nurses in the public health sector began a 48-hour strike on Wednesday, August 26th, to demand better protective equipment and the extension of bonus payments to workers. The strike affected all non-emergency services.
“Our concern is not about a pay rise, but about protecting the lives of our employees,” explains Wilfredo Ponce Castro, trade union secretary of the Lima section. “We also demand that the bonus reaches all health workers who are on duty every day because so far only 7,000 of the total of 25,000 medical front-line staff have received the bonus.”
In contrast, Minister of Health Pilar Mazzetti calls for a greater willingness of doctors and nurses to make sacrifices: “We all have absolutely understandable needs, but I don’t think this is the moment to take such drastic measures [as a strike]. Our population needs the health system and the virus is not on strike.”
However, 146 doctors have died from coronavirus infections in the line of duty to date.
Despite the lifting of the strict lockdown on July 1st in most regions of the country, strict measures remain in force. There is an absolute ban on going out at night between 10 PM and 4 AM. This has been in force for Sundays throughout August. Children under the age of 14 and senior citizens over the age of 65 must remain home. Social contacts were banned again after the rise in the number of cases in July.
In the event of violations, authorities take strict action: thirteen people were recently killed during a police operation in an illegally operated nightclub. The arrival of the security forces triggered a stampede in which several revelers were trampled to death near the only emergency exit, that was blocked.
The police stressed that they acted appropriately and in accordance with regulations. This triggered a heated debate on social media, with many gloating over the tragedy and considering the catastrophe a just punishment for the quarantine violators.