A girl wearing a mask to protect herself against the spread of the new coronavirus looks from her home in the neighborhood of Cristo del Consuelo as her family waits for food handouts from the local government of Guayaquil, Ecuador, Tuesday, April 14, 2020.
"There is no space for either the living or the dead. That's how severe the pandemic is in Guayaquil," Viteri told AFP in a phone interview Monday. Now authorities are forecasting a death toll of more than 3,500 in the city and its hinterland in the coming months.The first case of infection -- Ecuador's "patient zero" -- was of an elderly Ecuadoran woman who arrived from Spain.
Too late, the city went into lockdown as authorities imposed a 15-hour curfew and bodies began to accumulate in homes, and even on the streets.Guayaquil's authorities "are not the villains of the world," Viteri insisted. She continued: "Patients are dying without ever having had a test. And there is no space, time or resources to be able to carry out subsequent examinations and to know whether or not they died from the coronavirus."The true number will be known once this tragedy, this nightmare, ends."