UPDATE PERU #3 🇵🇪

The Peruvian lockdown is one of the strictest in the world: leave home only for essentials (food, medicine, bank), no private cars, no regional nor international travel and two curfews: weekdays (between 6pm and 5am) and Saturday afternoon thru Monday morning (no one allowed out).

The lockdown started mid march with ~50 confirmed cases, today we have ~35,000.

Peruvian cases have not grown as quick as those in other hotspots of the pandemic (USA/Europe), but the lockdown has NOT flattened the curve. Every day/week there is more cases and a reduction in cases is not expected. About ~70% of the Peruvian economy is informal and many infection hotspots are where people meet and where social distancing is nearly impossible to maintain: markets, public transport, cues to get stimulus checks and in overcrowded jails. Now we have thousands walking out of Lima going to their original regions. Some 65% of infections are in Lima, and these stranded walkers will spread the virus more as quarantining will be hard to maintain.

The lockdown hammer hasn't flattened the curve by reducing cases, but it has bought us time. We originally had 200 ICU beds, now we are up to 800. Starting early, Peru probably wanted to model the South Korean strategy of high throughput testing with low positive rate (<5% of test are C19 cases). With a strict lockdown in place, Peru needed to ramp up hospital capacity and testing capacity to 12,000 daily tests, the curve was expected to flatten around 4,000-5,000 cases. This didn't happen, and Peru now needs to do at least 100,000 daily tests to even control locally their pandemic. Actual PCR testing capacity can't capture the speed with which the virus is spreading so quick antibody tests need to be widely used (giving many false negatives).

On my last update I gave 4 options after this quarantine. But, what other measure can hammer down the curve (apart from this lockdown)?

The public school curriculum is now being broadcast on TV as it is very probable that schools will remain closed for the remainder of the calendar year. The government is additionally buying poor households 850,000 tablets with internet connection to support distance learning. The informal economy works for their daily bread, most without fridges to store food for days, without bank accounts to facilitate stimulus, and locked in tiny homes with many families. All desperate to eat... The formal economy (~30% of the population) is paying the biggest economic stimulus plan of the region with the taxes collected from businesses, business owners and employees. All desperate to lose it all...

The lockdown has now been extended 3 times, and after eight weeks it "might" end May 10th. Winter will slowly start in the southern hemisphere and loosening this lockdown will greatly increase infection and fatalities. How will authorities manage this new freedom with an over capacity health care system?

It is estimated that about ~45% of the country is now jobless or has not received a salary for the last month. Expect criminality and social unrests to increase. People are desperate and will need to point out faults, in a situation that was unmanageable from the beginning. I fear this pandemic will slowly become a political issue where to seek blame.

Peru is Latam's 2nd and the world's 15th most affected country. Expect many developing countries to follow similar trends in the next weeks/months.

WE ARE STILL AT THE BEGINNING.

37Lena Wieghardt, Jonathan SB and 35 others

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