Peruvian Health Minister Victor Zamora said in recent hours that had a national quarantine not been ordered in mid-March to contain the advance of the coronavirus pandemic, the country would have faced “a massacre.” This quarantine has allowed us to save 145,000 lives and avoid more than one million people hospitalized,” said Zamora, who was sworn in in office in mid-March this year. The incoming official’s words take place after the Government’s decision to maintain confinement in seven of the country’s 25 regions is known and will extend the full-country curfew until 31 July.
Peru is the sixth largest covid-19 case country in the world
The authorities reported that the State of National Emergency, which began on 16 March, will remain in force until 1 July and that quarantine will remain in the regions of Arequipa, Ica, Junín, Huánuco, San Martín, Madre de Dios and Áncash, where the disease is at full rise. Peru currently accounted for 279,419 confirmed cases of coronavirus (3,430 in the last 24 hours), of which 9,317 people died (182 on the last day) and 167,998 were already cured after being infected (3,974 new). It is then the second country in the worst-affected region and the sixth with the most positive cases in the world. Zamora noted that the country has a very different health reality from other states and detailed that the health system for the onset of the disease had only more than 100 intensive care beds, while today it has 1,400.The minister said that Peru is no longer “on a plateau”, but “in a frank decline” of the disease , as the average contagion in the country was currently down to 0.7 people per infected. However, he admitted that there may be an increase in cases once the total quarantine is complete and almost all economic activities are restarted, starting next Wednesday.
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