The Peruvian Amazon is already facing a dire emergency, with hospitals in its largest city Iquitos overwhelmed with COVID19 patients and local morgues unable to cope with the number of bodies.
"We have been working intensively to expand the services and provide hospitals in the Peruvian Amazon with all the necessary means to care for patients with COVID-19," said Federico Tong Hurtado, a spokesman for the social security services.
Roads are practically non-existent in the Peruvian jungle and rivers are the main means of transportation.An oxygen plant will begin operating in Iquitos, capital of the neighboring Amazon region of Loreto, on Monday, supplying a local 40-bed hospital. "The world's lung is dying from lack of oxygen and this is our sad reality," the director of Health for the Amazon Region of Loreto, Carlos Calampa, told AFP in a video call on Thursday, May 14., Colombia, and Ecuador, is the largest and least populated region in Peru but also the worst affected by the pandemic.
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