He couldn’t find a bed for his father. The young man knocked on the door of the public hospital of San José, in Callao, Peru’s first port, desperate for medical attention for his father, sick with covid-19, but the medical staff could not help him, despite the fact that the patient could not walk. Although medical oxygen was available at the center, doctors told him that there was too little space in the intermediate and intensive care units, so the family will have to continue to pay for oxygen to prevent the man’s health from deteriorating. Renting a five-gallon bottle of oxygen for six days cost them $ 190, although the first charge only took about eight hours. “There is a lot of investment and not only because of the money, but also because of the availability. That feeling of scarcity is fatal, ”explains the young man, who prefers not to mention his name. Like him, thousands of Peruvians are suffering every day from the collapse of the health system and the difficulty of finding oxygen in the midst of the pandemic that killed more than 40,000 people.
To avoid having to queue at dawn to buy oxygen, this Peruvian family has decided to spend $ 600 on an oxygen concentrator, an alternative that very few Peruvians have access to. The price of a 5 liter flow concentrator equals more than two minimum wages in Peru. And the 500 soles down payment to rent a 5 cubic meter cylinder is almost half the minimum monthly salary.
Medical oxygen concentrators do not require charging, but do require continuous electricity and are available for purchase in some appliance stores, as well as on unregulated sales websites, or on Facebook and other social media. Just as some covid-19 patients go to hospitals and cannot find a bed, others avoid entering the hospital with economical means and seeking oxygen themselves: either in 10 cubic meter balloons, or in cannulas and other oxygen devices that do not invasive.
During the first wave of the Peru pandemic, hundreds of people died from a lack of oxygen or as the prices of refillable cylinders soared until they were unattainable for the majority. That’s why churches, regional governments, businesses, and artists made public collections to buy and install oxygenating plants in all regions. This time there is more oxygen in the health facilities, but the staff and beds of hospitalization and intensive care are not enough to meet the demand.
Lisbeth Castro, representative of the Amazon Ombudsman in Loreto, reported on a radio that since July 25 intensive care beds in the COVID module of the Regional Hospital cannot be used because there are no mechanical respirators or because at ten o’clock Existing devices are missing. On Friday, one of Peru’s most important musicians, Alberto Sánchez Casanova, founder of the Amazon cumbia group Los Wemblers, passed away in Loreto. His daughter announced on Facebook that they expected a place in the covid module of the Regional Hospital, but they never referred it. “Only 27 beds work, but for my father there are none,” he wrote.
Informality and speculation
Luis Barsallo is a small businessman in Callao who sells input fillings at a fair price. He became famous from the first wave of the pandemic, to the point of being known as ‘the angel of oxygen’ and in the press he was highlighted as one of the characters of 2020. Since there is a market of resellers speculating on the price of oxygen, the employer asks customers to provide the documents of relatives diagnosed with covid-19 to ensure they do not provide intermediaries.
Barsallo has said he received threats last week for refusing to sell to those who didn’t show those papers and one day had to close his business as a precaution. It reopened Thursday and Friday, but with police protection. On Saturday, the Callao prosecutor opened an investigation into those found guilty of the alleged crime of duress against ‘the angel of oxygen’. At dawn Sunday, 110 people slept in tents or on plastic and cardboard outside their store, waiting to charge 10 cubic meters of cylinders, even with the uncertainty of whether Barsallo would open the store.
“It may sound a bit strong, but there are people who fear dying in the loneliness of a health facility and do their best to stay at home: there is a sense in this second wave that oxygen is something that can be itself -managed, but the first option must be that the oxygen is provided by the hospitalization: it must be consumed with a prescription and medical supervision, ”Alicia Abanto, deputy of the Ombudsman’s public services, told EL PAÍS.
Abanto explains that the National Superintendence of Health has been publishing a report for several weeks on the oxygen that is available every day in hospitals and clinics. “If someone goes to a hospital and refuses the drug because oxygen is a drug, he should look at the report and complain if it isn’t provided,” he advises. “Amidst this increase in the demand for medicinal oxygen, we see the problem of informal and illicit trade – even in the networks they denounce against fraud – and the very limited intervention of the state to control and sanction. This input must be distributed by an authorized operator, as self-medicating at home with poor quality oxygen can cost lives, ”said the official.
Abanto reports that patients are sent home in hospital in emergencies. “They tell them their saturation is not very low, but what they need to do is refer them to a hospital where a bed is available,” he said. Although health authorities report daily that there are still intensive care beds, they are in regions where second wave indicators are still moderate.
Engineer and data analyst Rodrigo Parra noted this Sunday at the Radio Programs station that the UCI bed occupancy rate in the second wave is higher than the landings. “The occupancy was 20 IC beds per day in the first wave and now it’s 30,” he said. Although the maximum occupancy of ICU rooms last year was 1,553 and this year 1,865 with a supply of 1,900 beds, Parra added that these figures are not “that reliable with regard to reality in hospitals.”
The Peruvian Society of Intensive Medicine has revealed since March that there are no more than 700 physicians in this specialty qualified for intensive care units, and Health Minister Pilar Mazzetti has indicated that only 60% of Health’s workforce is operational, either because he died or because he had to leave the position due to age or comorbidity. Up to the end of January, 276 doctors have died in Peru from the novel coronavirus: it is the third Latin American country with the lowest losses after Mexico and Brazil, but proportionally the loss is greater: it has fewer doctors per thousand inhabitants compared to those countries . Last Sunday, a new two-week quarantine began in ten departments of the country where the pandemic is classified by the government as in an “extreme situation”. Among them Lima and Callao, the Peruvian port where the population faces the odyssey to find an oxygen tank for people with covid.