Covid-19 deaths in Peru are more than double what had been counted so far.
Authorities reported monday that in the South American country more than 180,000 people have died for coronavirus, which is 2.5 times more than the nearly 70,000.
This also places Peru as the country with the highest per capita mortality rate in the world in the pandemic.
The new number agrees with the so-called “excess deaths,” a measure of how many more people are dying compared to trends in previous years.
The president of the council of ministers Violeta Bermudez said that the number of deaths was reviewed by the council of Peruvian and international experts.
“We believe it is our duty to make this updated information public,” Bermudez said.
The highest rate in the world
Peru has been one of the countries most affected by the pandemic in Latin America, with a saturated public health system and a crisis due to lack of oxygen tanks.
So far, deaths from the pandemic have only included deaths from symptomatic patients with positive test to covid-19.
However, the National Computer System of Deaths showed that there was an underestimation of deaths. In April, the Executive created a panel of experts to review the figures.
With the information as of May 22, the total number of covid-19 deaths was set at 180,764, a big increase from the 69,342 that had been counted.
Neighboring Colombia and Bolivia have recorded 88,282 and 14,000 deaths, respectively. In contrast, Brazil has one of the highest death tolls in the world, with more than 460,000.
But Peru now has the largest number of deaths from covid-19 in the world in relation to the size of its population, (about 32.5 million): about 500 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants.
Hungary previously had the worst number of deaths per capita with a rate of 300 per 100,000 people.
