Covid-19: Guayaquil, Ecuador’s pandemic epicenter, has not had hospitalized patients for two days

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – During the most critical months of the pandemic in 2020, Guayaquil was referred to as “the Wuhan of Ecuador. In this city, the second-most populous in the country, citizens died of covid-19 even in the streets, the health system collapsed, and even hundreds of corpses of patients infected with the coronavirus disappeared due to poor sanitary conditions.

Despite this tragedy, doctors in the city have now reported that they have not received any hospitalized Covid-19 patients for two days more than a year later.

Guayaquil is a port and commercial city. Many of the residents make a living from daily sales. Therefore, when the pandemic broke out, thousands of citizens were forced to leave their homes and go to work, despite the risk of infection.

Social conditions and the presence of the new virus were compounded by other diseases such as dengue fever, so those who fell ill in Guayaquil may have been victims of a “double whammy” in March 2020, according to a researcher at the University of Berkeley.

“When Covid-19 was introduced, (dengue) went down to zero. And it’s not that it went to zero, it’s that the health system is overloaded and no one is really tracking dengue cases,” the researcher told the BBC at the time.

In August 2021, public and private hospitals in Guayaquil did not admit Covid-19 patients for up to three days, and bed occupancy dropped significantly compared to July. For example, according to the El Universo newspaper, Teodoro Maldonado Carbo Hospital had been free of patients with the coronavirus for 72 hours on August 19. The general director of Teodoro Maldonado Carbo Hospital, epidemiologist Francisco Andino, told El Universo that “at the moment there are six patients in the Covid-19 intensive care unit.”

The same is true for the Sentinel Hospital for the treatment of Covid-19 in Guasmo Sur. No infected patients have been admitted to the health center’s intensive care unit for 48 hours. Also, according to information from El Universo, the Luis Vernaza Hospital had 48 occupied beds in March and now has only 12 occupied beds in August. In the clinic of Kennedy Alborada Hospital, the situation is similar. They have not received any coronavirus patients for two days.

Physician John Cuenca explained three reasons for the decrease in admissions: Vaccination, safety measures, and immunity due to previous infections.

SITUATION AT NATIONAL LEVEL

This week, Health Minister Ximena Garzón told the media that the decrease in deaths caused by a coronavirus in the country was due to the 9-100 vaccination plan promoted by the national government. Today, Thursday, President Guillermo Lasso announced that the number of deaths continues to decline and urged citizens to get vaccinated with the two doses. In April 2020, 1,134 deaths were registered, but this month only 61 deaths were counted.

According to the latest report of the Ministry of Public Health, the percentage of bed occupancy is 32% for inpatient care and 36% for intermediate care. In intensive care units, the occupancy rate is 61%.

In Guayas province, where Guayaquil is located, 74.6% of the population over 16 years of age has already received at least one dose of the vaccine, and 40.27% have received two doses.

In Ecuador as a whole, 5.9 million people have been vaccinated with the full antiviral schedule, and more than 4 million are waiting for the second dose. The country has vaccinated the population with Pfizer, Sinovac, and AstraZeneca vaccines and the single-dose CanSino.

The government has 21 days left to reach its goal of vaccinating all 9 million Ecuadorians to reactivate the economy.