Peru seemed to be doing everything right.

Its president, Martín Vizcarra, announced one of the earliest coronavirus lockdowns in Latin America on 16 March.

In stark contrast to his Brazilian counterpart, Jair Bolsonaro – who has deliberately undermined social distancing and quarantine measures – Peru’s leader strictly adhered to the World Health Organization’s coronavirus recommendations and mobilised the police and army to enforce a stringent quarantine.

But more than two months later the country is one of the region’s worst-hit by Covid-19 and has been unable to flatten the curve of infections. Peru now ranks second only to Brazil in Latin America with 104,020 confirmed cases and a death toll of 3,024 according to official figures on Tuesday.

 

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Vizcarra said on Friday that Peru had carried out 600,000 coronavirus tests – “more than any other country in the region”. But while Peru’s numbers could reflect increased and better targeted testing rather than an underlying trend, the jump in new cases is undeniable. In the past week, the number of new Covid-19 cases logged each day rose from more than 3,000 to above 4,000 a day, hitting a record 4,550 new cases on Tuesday.

“Peru’s response was right on time,” said Elmer Huerta, a Peruvian doctor and trusted broadcaster on public health matters for Latin American audiences. “It was the first country in Latin America to respond with a lockdown.

“But the problem was people’s behaviour,” he said. “The fact that on the eighth week of confinement you have thousands of people who are positive [for Covid-19] means that those people got the virus while the country was in lockdown – which means they did not respect the law.”

Deadly outbreaks on Peru’s northern coast and Amazon regions – where social distancing was routinely flouted – laid bare the gaping holes in Peru’s chronically underfunded healthcare system. Covid-19 hit Peru’s largest Amazon city, Iquitos, with deadly force before spreading to Pucallpa, on the country’s eastern border with Brazil.

Source: Peru’s coronavirus response was ‘right on time’ – so why isn’t it working?