LIMA – Peru yesterday more than doubled its official coronavirus death toll, becoming the country with the highest Covid-19 mortality per capita anywhere in the world.
The government said it raised the figure from 69,342 to 180,764 on the advice of a panel of health experts that found an undercount.
With the adjustment, Peru now has the highest virus mortality per capita of any country, with 5,484 deaths per million inhabitants, according to an AFP count.
The country of about 33 million people previously ranked 13th in the world with 2,103 fatalities per million, according to AFP data.
Hungary is in a distant second with 3,077 deaths per million.
Peru has registered more than 1.9 million infections to date, and in recent months suffered acute shortages of oxygen to treat Covid-19 patients.
Prime Minister Violeta Bermudez said the toll was adjusted on the advice of a panel that suggested modifying Peru’s record-keeping criteria.
Change in methodology
The panel in a report said the existing methodology generated “an under-representation in the number of deaths due to Covid-19”.
The criteria have been broadened beyond people who tested positive for the virus to include “probable” cases with “an epidemiological link to a confirmed case”.
They now also include people thought to be infected with the virus who present “a clinical picture compatible with the disease”.
The panel, convened in April, comprises experts from public and private health entities in Peru and the World Health Organisation.
“Thanks to the work of this team... we will have more exhaustive figures... that will be very useful to monitor the pandemic and take the appropriate measures to confront it,” said Bermudez.
Peru started its vaccination campaign on February 9, but it has been slow, so far reaching just 5% of the adult population with at least one shot.
The Andean nation has battled a second virus wave since last December, with a record of almost 13,000 infections on April 1.
There are nearly 12,000 coronavirus patients in hospital, but the health system has been able to breathe a little since the peak of 15,547 occupied beds recorded on April 20.
The adjustment to the death toll comes six days before a presidential run-off between right-wing candidate Keiko Fujimori and leftist Pedro Castillo, both of whom have promised to speed up the country’s immunisation campaign. – AFP, June 1, 2021
