We are on day 144 (that's almost 5 months!!) of lockdown quarantine here in Arequipa. What this means is that you are only allowed to go out to buy essential items. This is supposed to cut down on the number of people out, the amount of time people spend out, all to decrease the amount of contact between people. However, because of the way of life here, it hasn’t worked exactly as the government hoped.
March 16 Peru closed its borders, closed all interprovincial travel, closed all schools, and closed all businesses except essential businesses (banks, grocery stores, and pharmacies). Kids weren’t allowed outside their homes and you couldn’t go outside to exercise. To limit movement around the city no private vehicles were allowed on the road unless you had a special permit from the government and even then only one person per household was allowed out at a time. Police and military patrolled the streets to question people why they were out and check cars for permits, and if they didn’t have a reason they would be taken to the police station and charged a fine. A country-wide curfew was put in place from 5pm-5am and an all-day curfew on Sunday. Masks were required beginning in April and all stores began taking temperatures as you entered.
At this point, day 144 of quarantine, all malls and stores are still closed. There is still a curfew from 8pm-4am and an all-day Sunday curfew. Kids can go out for an hour a day but have to stay within 500m of their home and are not allowed in stores or parks. Schools are still closed. You can go out to exercise wearing a mask. You still must have a special permit to drive a private vehicle. Some other businesses have been able to open up (hair salons, hardware stores) and restaurants have been able to open for delivery only.
Even with all these restrictions in place the case numbers here in Arequipa are continuing to rise and the healthcare system has collapsed. The public hospital is overrun, there are no more ICU beds there, patients that arrive have to wait outside or in the hallways for a bed and many times are turned away, or left waiting all night, not because they don’t need medical attention, but because there are no beds. It is very hard to find oxygen if you are in need of oxygen and if you do find it, it is very expensive because of the increased demand. There are private hospitals but the majority of people cannot afford to go to them.
To give you some numbers, when quarantine started Peru had a total of 276 ICU beds and 40 ventilators in the entire country (population 32 million). Today there are around 1330 ICU beds (I couldn’t find a current number of ventilators but it has a goal of getting 2000 ventilators. USAID donated 250 ventilators in June). While that is a great increase it is still not enough. To compare, the city of Dallas alone has 957 ICU beds and 1002 ventilators.
So why is it continuing to spread so rampantly with the lockdown being in place for so long? Many Peruvians live day to day not having enough money to be able to buy a week’s worth of groceries at a time. This means they must go to the market every day to buy food for that day. This alone increases the number of people they come into contact with. It has also been discovered that the markets have been a hot spot for COVID cases. In Lima they did hundreds of tests on the vendors in 5 different markets and in each market the percentage of positive tests was above 50% with one market having 79% of the tests come back positive. These are markets that are seeing thousands of people a day. So if you are someone that goes to the market every day, this increases your possibility of contact with someone with the virus. Here in Peru, because so much of the work is informal, they have no “sick days”. It is work and have food to eat, or don’t work and starve. So even if people feel sick they aren’t able to stop working or else they won’t have food to eat. Again, increasing chances that infected people are in contact with others.
Our family has been pretty well quarantined here at the hotel where we are living. Jeremy has gotten a permit to be able to drive our car a couple times and has been able to go by our home to pick up some more things for us. We take Kinney and Adileen on a walk once a day and they LOVE getting to go outside the hotel grounds. We have a grocery store nearby which is super helpful since we can’t drive our car around.
We have noticed an increase in cases here in Arequipa because we hear of more and more people with fewer degrees of separation to us that have either contracted COVID or have died. We have heard sad stories about people who have died because they weren’t able to find oxygen or a bed at the hospital. The doctors and nurses are overworked and aren’t provided with enough protection equipment so they have to buy their own, if they can find it.
There is so much sadness and it has been heavy on our hearts lately as we strive to help where we can but at the same time we hear stories of hope. We hear of people that are helping their neighbors and people they don’t know at all. We have gotten to partner with a couple organizations to help provide food and blankets and oxygen to some of those most in need.
We are tired. We are weary. We are praying a lot. But we are so well cared for and taken care of and we are so thankful for each of you that have checked in on us. May God heal our world.
