From Hospital El Salvador’s capacity to promoting vaccination related to Central America, this was Bukele’s speech at the inauguration of the COVID Vaccination Center.
The El Salvador Hospital was established to function as an exclusive hospital for patients with COVID-19. Although the government initially said it would be ready in June 2020, it has been more than a year for the third phase to be completed; On April 12, President Nayib Bukele announced that the third phase of Hospital El Salvador, which was planned as an area with more intensive care units, will be a vaccination center today.
But the president’s speech contained some true, false, and misleading facts. El Diario de Hoy verifies some of them:
“Phase I (of the El Salvador hospital) arrived in time for our health system to flood” – FALSE
Phase I of Hospital El Salvador was inaugurated on June 21, 2020, when COVID cases reached their highest peak for that month. That day, there were 2,046 active cases and 107 deaths from COVID; That same day, the government reported 182 positive cases, the highest number of new cases in a day to date, according to the official website covid19.gob.sv.
Meanwhile, deaths from “atypical pneumonia,” respiratory distress, respiratory failure and cardiac arrest multiplied in the death records, which for doctors consulted by El Diario de Hoy were suspected deaths from COVID-19.
In addition, although the government has inaugurated Phase I, it took at least a month for the health personnel to go to the hospital to be hired.
Bukele also assured that once this phase was completed, the press would have access to the site. It never happened. El Diario de Hoy requested entry twelve times and it was denied.
You can read: What happens if I don’t get vaccinated?
“400 beds with everything you need (phase I). This is how we relieve the health system ”- FALSE
Since Hospital El Salvador was inaugurated, Bukele has provided incorrect data on the center’s hospital capacity. Last year, a document published on the Presidency’s website that the first phase of Hospital El Salvador, located between Pavilions 1 and Centroamericano (of the former Cifco), actually had 105 beds for the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). Something the president’s speech from his own office denied.
Likewise, on April 12, Bukele assured that El Salvador already has 1,130 Intensive Care units, but that figure has not been confirmed as neither the government has presented images of the total capacity, nor the press has had access to the place to verify it.
“We have the highest number of vaccines in the region, not only at the per capita level, but also at the aggregate level” – FALSE
Our world in data, a publication from the University of Oxford, shows the number of doses administered to the people of Central America since December. The countries with the most applied doses are Costa Rica and Panama, with up to 500,000 doses delivered by April 11 this year. Costa Rica started vaccinating in December.
El Salvador and Guatemala follow with up to 200,000 doses administered. Finally, there is Honduras, the country with the fewest registrations to date. There are no data for Nicaragua.
Another way to look at the evolution of vaccination in Central America is to compare the number of fully vaccinated people by country. Costa Rica leads with 213,562 fully vaccinated people, followed by Panama with 157,100; Honduras with 2,639; Guatemala with 1,639 and El Salvador, which reports no data on this.
Costa Rica and Panama were the first countries in the region to start vaccinating their inhabitants. El Salvador has administered the first doses for less than a month.
“We have never been able to occupy even 60% of the capacity (of Hospital El Salvador) – DECEPTIVE
The president has released unverifiable information. The reason? There are no public records of Hospital El Salvador’s capacity, and no records of the admission, discharge, and death of patients with COVID-19 treated on site. In fact, information related to the pandemic has been reserved by the government for up to seven years.
On March 24 this year, the Ministry of Health declared the full reservation of information related to the application and purchase of vaccines against COVID-19, prohibiting access to this data for up to 5 years. Likewise, the “Register of SARS-Cov-2 vaccination huts” will be subject to three years.
But it is not the only information that the government has locked up. Most official information regarding the pandemic’s treatment, purchases, and statistics has been declared confidential.
“We’ve had an increase (in cases) in recent days” – MISLEADING
After Bukele denied the intention to promote a new quarantine, he assured that although there was an increase in cases, the curve has stabilized.
However, the number of new cases is constantly rising and falling, resulting in a map of new cases that appears to be stagnant ahead of the peak in July and August 2020.
In addition, data on new cases is updated with a delay by the government. It’s not uncommon for two, three, or even 12 days to pass without updating. Google’s record of positive cases in the country is skewed when there are days when the official page does not report new cases: Google’s chart reports zero cases, as the government publishes the data days later. In fact, the chart published on the official page, updated with a delay, does not show a single day without new cases being diagnosed.
Between April 4 and 12, the government did not publish data on new cases.
Last December, researcher and academic Oscar Picardo Joao said: “Statistically, it is worrying (that the data is not being updated) as the epidemiological picture is distorted.
“El Salvador has inherited a precarious health system” – TRUE
In 2014, several specialists at Rosales National Hospital complained to El Diario de Hoy for the lack of medicines, damage and lack of technological equipment, damage to hospital infrastructure, beds that were out of order, and operating rooms with equipment up to 15 years old. .
While this government has so far renovated facilities, purchased new equipment and hired staff to attend the pandemic, complaints remain about the lack of drugs for cancer patients. The ISSS had to provide equipment for the operation of Hospital El Salvador last year. And today, Bukele announced that health personnel will be transferred to the vaccination center at Hospital El Salvador to meet the demand.