Source: Wading through false information during a pandemic – CuencaHighLife

As the coronavirus spreads through Ecuador and the rest of Latin America, stories of the impact of the disease are also spreading worldwide through the media. Unfortunately, some of those stories are exaggerated, false, or actually manipulated by political forces outside of these countries.

On the ground sources are scarce, and stories placed “on the wire” are being circulated without hands-on verification. Case in point is a recent story in the Bangkok Post which said that as many as 800 bodies — deaths due to the coronavirus—were stacked upon each other in the streets of Guayaquil.

Local reports have proven that claim to be false. While there were some bodies left on the streets of the barrios in Guayaquil in the early days of the country’s quarantine, the national government stepped in within a matter of days and resolved the issues surrounding that situation. While the government admits that there were problems originally, they are now collecting between 100 to 150 bodies a day in the country’s financial center.

How many of those deaths are virus related and how many are due to other natural causes continues to be a point of contention. The difficulty in identifying the cause of death is due to a number of reasons. First and foremost, is that the manpower needed during a pandemic situation to take care of the living is overriding the ability of the healthcare system to perform autopsies on all of the bodies being collected. Second, is a lack of testing that continues to be a problem in the country.

Nonetheless, the government is trying to keep an accurate tally on those they can verify did in fact have symptoms of the virus before their death. One way they are doing this is by launching an online system that allows family members to report deaths, along with symptoms, in real time. First responders are using this tool to identify where retrieval is necessary. Public health forces are using the data to identify hot spots of infection. And families are using it to avoid waiting on the phone or in person to report a death.

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