Containers Arrive in Ecuadorian City Struggling to Collect the Dead

HAVANA TIMES – The mayor of Ecuador’s most populous city said on Wednesday that the first of four refrigerated containers had arrived for the storage of bodies that authorities have failed to pick up due to strict quarantine measures to prevent the spread of Covid-19, reports dpa news.

Cynthia Viteri, the mayor of the western coastal city of Guayaquil, said that the containers would be used to hold the bodies of people who had died at home and in hospitals, both as a result of the Covid-19 respiratory disease that results from the novel coronavirus and of other causes.

Ecuadorian media have reported that families in the city have been forced to keep their loved ones’ bodies in their homes for days amid the authorities’ failure to collect corpses.

Some have resorted to leaving the bodies in the streets of the city of roughly 2.3 million people, the reports said.

Ecuador has one of the heaviest coronavirus case loads in Latin America. The Health Ministry says the country has more than 2,300 confirmed cases, with 79 having died as a result of Covid-19.

The province of Guayas, where Guayaquil is located, has the vast majority of cases.

Viteri also said that the city’s Simon Bolivar Convention Centre would be made available to the Health Ministry for the treatment of Covid-19 patients.