COVID-19 Ecuador Updates 6

24/April

I know that often people respond to my posts with "it's the same as everywhere else", or "nothing different there from here".

In my posts I try and update people that care and have a concern for us and Ecuador as a country. By no means am I belittling what others are going through, or saying that we are worse off.

We all are going through hard times, and it is affecting all of us differently.

Being that Ecuador is a socialistic developing country, the stories here are often different from what you will hear other places.

I wanna share a few more news posts and statistics.

New York Times reporter and specialist says that, considering the infrastructure and testing of the country, Ecuador could have up to 15 times the number of cases that are confirmed, giving it a higher case per population index than any other country.

Although we can't always trust news outlets, here are some statistics.

Only 3 out of every 1,000 citizens have been given the test so far. Our list of suspected cases is still higher than the confirmed cases. We are so low on covid-19 tests, that we have over 1,000 suspected deaths from the corona-virus, but cannot administer the tests to see if they did have the virus or not. The body counts in some of the cities are even higher than what statistics show, as there are still bodies laying around in homes or even on the streets.

The scarcity of tests and hospital space also affects those "recovered"... Ecuador does not have a statistic for recovered, but rather a statistic called "given hospital leave" because they allow people who are showing signs of recovery to leave before they are tested to prove that they have fully recovered and there are already cases of these people either returning to the hospitals themselves, or infecting others.

Even the numbers we do have put this country, which is number 67 in world population, in the top 15 of confirmed cases and deaths.

Even so, the numbers still continue to grow..and they grow exponentially each week. Everyone agrees that we still haven't hit the peak of the curve yet, and even with all of the preventative measures, and increased control, people are getting desperate. In a country with a very low income rate, and where many have become accustomed to be entitled to receive things, people are either bored, lash out, or very much in need of a little cash to survive because they are forced to stay home out of work.

There has been in the last week hundreds of arrests for people breaking the law, small local riots, and police officers and military personnel being attacked while on duty and ordering people to obey the curfew and state of emergency laws.

The president has announced that because of the economic issues facing the country and it's citizens, that I mentioned in my last post, starting May 4th we will move from the quarantine stage to the social distancing stage, lowering to some extent the restrictions and allowing some people in some of the provinces to return to work.

Please continue to pray for Ecuador, and pray that even during this time where we are not able to leave our homes, us and the pastors and ministries we work with will be able to shine the light of Jesus!

"With bodies abandoned on sidewalks, slumped in wheelchairs, packed into cardboard coffins and stacked by the hundreds in morgues, it is clear that Ecuador has been devastated by the coronavirus.

But the epidemic is even worse than many people in the country realize.The death toll in Ecuador during the outbreak was 15 times higher than the official number of Covid-19 deaths reported by the government, according to an analysis of mortality data by The New York Times."

Exert from a NYT article I posted...you can read the whole article here.