Police Remove Over 400 Bodies from Homes and Streets in Bolivia

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Police officers have removed over 400 corpses from streets and homes in Bolivia in only five days, the Special Force for the Fight Against Crime (FELCC) reported on Tuesday, July 21st,. Of this total, it is estimated that the majority died from Covid-19.

In the city of Cochabamba alone, 191 bodies were removed. In La Paz, the seat of Bolivian government, 141 bodies were retrieved, according to Col. Iván Rojas, the FELCC’s national director. The operation took place between July 15th and 20th.

According to Rojas, 85 percent of the bodies were either confirmed for the novel coronavirus or showed symptoms of Covid-19. Bolivian authorities will catalog these cases as “suspected” – it is unclear whether they could all be tested.

The situation is similar to Ecuador’s in April when cases of the novel coronavirus in Guayaquil led to a collapse in the healthcare and funeral systems. Bodies were seen scattered on the streets, and vultures flying over the city.

Covid-19 in Bolivia

According to the national epidemiological department, the coronavirus is escalating “very rapidly” in the La Paz and Cochabamba regions, both in western Bolivia.

Andrés Flores, director of the Forensic Investigations Institute, said that between April 1st and July 19th the public body “concluded the out-of-hospital medical legal certification of 3,016 bodies suspected and confirmed to be infected with Covid-19.” The majority of these occurred in Santa Cruz, the first epicenter of the disease in the country.

Bolivia, with a population of 11 million, records over 60,000 Covid-19 infections since the pandemic began. The novel coronavirus has claimed more than 2,200 lives in the country.

Among those infected is the country’s interim president, Jeanine Áñez. She is asymptomatic and feeling well.

Source: AFP

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