Peru and its true death toll from covid

Peru said that their death toll from COVID-19 is actually almost triple the official number. The new number would place Peru between the most affected countries in the world in relation to their population.

In a report released on Monday – which combined deaths from different databases and reclassified deaths -, The government assures that as of May 22, 180,764 people have died from COVID-19, nearly three times the official death toll in the country, which has recorded around 68,000 deaths. The new figure would mean that more people have died in Peru relative to its population than in Hungary and the Czech Republic, the countries with the highest official number of deaths per capita, according to the database of Peru. The New York Times.

The report was published in a precarious moment for the government of Peru, a few days before the second round of the early presidential elections, which are for June 6.

Peru has struggled to contain the coronavirus since the start of the pandemic and its official death toll before the new estimate was already the ninth highest in the world in terms of per capita deaths. Since last June it was clear that many more deaths have occurred in the country than in a normal year and that the gap was much larger than the death toll officially attributed to COVID-19, according to data from The New York Times. It was a wake-up call to experts that deaths from COVID were underestimated in the tally.

Peru could be the first of several countries forced to consider reassessing the real impact of the pandemic. The World Health Organization said earlier this month that deaths from COVID-19 around the world may be many more than what has been reported.

The government of Peru will begin publishing more accurate daily counts of cases and deaths based on new directives established in the report, said Óscar Ugarte, the Minister of Health.

“It’s a new tool” to help fight the pandemic, Ugarte said, adding that the new estimate “requires modifications“Of all the current policies aimed at controlling the spread of the virus.

The pandemic has intensified the political crisis in Peru, caused by impeachment of former president Martín Vizcarra in November. Vizcarra has been one of four successive presidents over the past five years, three of whom have spent time in jail for corruption investigations.

The departure of Vizcarra, which sparked a series of protests, this happened a few months before the first round of the presidential election held in April. Pedro Castillo, a former union leader and teacher, got the most votes in April and will face Keiko Fujimori, daughter of the imprisoned former president Alberto Fujimori, on June 6.

South America is now the region where the virus is spreading the fastest: There are five countries on the continent among the ten that report the most new cases per 100,000 people in the world.

The worst epidemic on the continent is in Argentina, which should be the seat of the Chopped off America before organizers announced he would move to Brazil.

Andrés R. Martínez is editor and correspondent for live and breaking news. He previously worked for The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg News, and The Monitor newspaper in McAllen, Texas. @amartinezNYT

(c) The New York Times

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