Bolivia Reaches New Infection Record as Health System Collapses

Bolivia’s Health Ministry reported 977 new COVID-19 cases on Friday, bringing the total number of infections to 22,476 in a country whose death toll has reached 715 so far.

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The situation is especially worrying in Santa Cruz, the most populated region of Bolivia with just over three million inhabitants, which concentrates the majority of cases (13,539) and the highest number of deaths (319).

The epidemiological situation is also worrying in Beni, where 3,773 COVID-19 cases and 171 deaths have been registered, despite the fact that this Amazon region has less than half a million inhabitants with a density of fewer than two people per square kilometer.

Their health system, however, is saturated and the Beni authorities had to declare a "state of disaster", which allowed them to receive support from the rest of the country.

While the coup-born regime led by Jeanine Añez allowed municipalities to relax the quarantine from June 1, La Paz will reestablish restrictions related to physical distancing and vehicle circulation next week. This will happen in response to increases in infections.

In this context, the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) has denounced that the multimillion-dollar resources the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB) gave to the Añez administration have not improved health care in this Andean country.

Many infected people are dying on hospital doors or in their homes after having pilgrimage through several saturated health centers, which cannot care for them in practice.

"Bolivia's health crisis is already overwhelmed and the situation is dramatic. Añez's coup-born regime boasted of having imposed a harsh and militarized quarantine... however, when it began to relax, the contagion curve took a leap," La Izquierda Diario reported.