The coronavirus pandemic is " escalating very rapidly " in La Paz, the capital of Bolivia, and in Cochabamba, in the west of the country, health officials announced on Monday. In La Paz, patients are dying at their homes or at the doors of hospitals which are saturated, according to testimonies published on social networks.
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Since the pandemic began in Bolivia in March, the city of Santa Cruz, the country's economic engine, in the east, has been the main focus of the disease. And in the Amazon region of Beni, affected in May and June, the number of contagions peaked at around 5,000. In contrast, La Paz (9,655 cases) and Cochabamba (6,406 cases) have experienced a strong upward trend for a week, according to the official epidemiological report published on Monday.
" The cases are doubling every week ", and the increase in the epidemic is recorded " particularly in the departments of La Paz and Cochabamba ", the national head of epidemiology, Virgilio Prieto, told the news agency official ABI. The pandemic "is going to worsen much more in the West, because we are seeing a very rapid escalation ", stressed Virgilo Prieto. He deplored the widespread non-compliance in the population with the health protection rules established to fight against Covid-19.
No access to healthcare
Despite the bans, people flock to markets, banks and public transport stops. " We are seeing an evolution of the cases in the department of La Paz and we are in full escalation ", said the technical director of the regional health service, Ramiro Narvaez.
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Residents complain of not having access to care in hospitals, whose emergency services are saturated. In the last four days that La Paz was in strict containment, police have collected nearly 90 bodies from the streets and homes, said police official Col. Ivan Rojas. " We are talking about 24 cases for the day of Friday ", that is to say a corpse collected every hour, specified this police officer.
Bolivia, which has 11 million inhabitants, recorded as of Monday nearly 60,000 cases of contamination and 2,151 deaths, figures which have almost doubled compared to the end of June.