LIMA (AP) – Peru announced Thursday night that it will progressively receive almost 2,000 tons of oxygen from Chile to alleviate a deep shortage of the element among its thousands of people infected by COVID-19.
The measure is unprecedented in Latin America and is announced in the midst of a harsh drama experienced by thousands of relatives of infected people who make endless lines days and nights throughout Peru in search of a little oxygen to prevent their loved ones from drowning.
The Minister of Health, Oscar Ugarte, announced to the press that from Monday, 40 tons per week purchased in Chile will arrive from a total of 960 tons that will be distributed in the hundreds of hospitals that also suffer from shortages after the start of a second wave of infections in January. Ugarte added that Chile agreed to donate another 1,000 tons of oxygen that will be delivered in the same quantity and frequency.
Oxygen shortages have skyrocketed in recent weeks to alarming levels for a country already hit hard by the virus. The government revealed last Sunday that the country needs 444 tons of oxygen every 24 hours and that per day there are usually between 100 and 110 shortages. Some 39 hospitals in the country were left without oxygen at the beginning of the week, reported the Ombudsman’s Office.
Doctors indicate that the lack of supplemental oxygen for those infected by COVID-19 prolongs the hypoxic symptoms, which, when left untreated, cause painful agonies and ultimately death due to cardiorespiratory arrest.
Thousands of Peruvians sleep in the streets in lines that last weeks in order to get a little oxygen for their patients, many of them bedridden in their own homes because hospitals have collapsed and do not receive new patients.
The shortage has led to countless cases of scams and high costs of oxygen-filled tanks whose prices have more than tripled in one year. The ranks of the oxygen seekers also abound with resellers and traffickers who act in the face of police inaction.
Dozens of relatives of patients consulted by the AP in various lines that are formed in front of the oxygen-producing plants in Lima affirm that they have been ruined or in debt to the bank to obtain the vital element for their loved ones.
The pandemic exposed the scarce amount of medicinal oxygen-producing plants. Before March 2020 there were just nine, now there are 121 in the whole country, but they are insufficient to produce the necessary amount of the vital element that allows the recovery of the infected.
The government indicated that it also facilitated the importation of portable oxygen concentrators, which are generally purchased by wealthier families. Minister Ugarte said that 697 institutions or persons importing concentrators have been registered. International institutions such as UNICEF have donated 55 concentrators distributed in the Andes and the Amazon.
Peru registers more than 1.3 million coronavirus cases and 45,903 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins University Center for Science and Systems Engineering.
