A12 eZ su the washington post.saturday, april 4 , 2020
“People are dying like flies
here,” Castillo said. “I don’t h ave a
single colleague not telling me
they don’t cry every day after a
shift. This is overwhelming.”
for some, the inability of the
system to cope has added agony
to personal loss.
Dante Logacho described tak-
ing his wife to a hospital. mabel
Zúñiga, 48, had been showing
symptoms for a few days.
“She was coughing, and I had
to fight for her to even enter to
the hospital,” Logacho, a 49-year-
old publicist, said by telephone. “I
fought with all the doctors and
nurses. There were so many peo-
ple there.”
The hospital staff ordered fam-
ily members to leave.
“I should have taken her to a
private clinic,” he said. “I thought
that as a hospital they would be
more prepared for this.”
The call came two days later.
Zúñiga had died of virus-related
pneumonia.
It took Logacho five days to
find a funeral home willing and
able to handle the corpse. But he
won’t be attending the funeral
with other family members. He
has virus symptoms, too.
“Before leaving her at the hos-
pital that day, she told me her
vision was blurry, and I remem-
ber saying that everything was
going to be okay,” h e said. “I didn’t
know it was going to be the last
time I would see her face.”
“If I saw her now, I would tell
her, I will love you forever,” he
said. “A nd that I’m sorry it wasn’t
me.”
[email protected]Faiola reported from miami, and
Herrero f rom caracas, Venezuela.
te o armus in Washington contributed
to this report.streets and corpses left in homes
for days] that are going around
the world are real,” she said.
“Why? Because our health system
is the same one we had before the
pandemic, a health system that in
the midst of a pandemic has
collapsed.”
marcelo Castillo is an intensive
care physician at the Kennedy
Clinic Hospital in Guayaquil.
“I work in a very wealthy part
of the city, n orth of Guayaquil,” he
said by telephone. “I can tell you
that people are starting to under-
stand that even having all the
money and political contacts, you
might not survive this.”thrown on the ground.”
Dump trucks have poured gal-
lons of soapy water on city streets
as part of a sanitation effort. The
city’s mayor, Cynthia Viteri, told
reporters in a facebook news
conference Thursday that ship-
ping containers had been placed
at hospitals to store cadavers.
Viteri has confirmed that she,
too, has caught the virus.
She blamed Guayaquil’s crisis
on a health system that was
already on the brink of collapse
before the outbreak, a preexisting
condition in many parts of Latin
America and the developing
world.
“The images [of bodies in theliving.”
In a video that has gone viral, a
teary-eyed woman who identifies
herself as Gabriela orellana begs
the government to recover her
husband’s body from their home.
for days, she says, she was quar-
antined as his body lay upstairs
and officials insisted they were
coming to transport him.
She addresses Ecuadoran Pres-
ident Lenín moreno. “If you see
this video, mr. President, please,
where are they?” she asks. “They
told me they were coming, and it
was a lie.” She sobs into a purple
face mask. “I’m only asking for
you to help him die with dignity.
Please. Don’t leave him here,the coronavirus pandemic
funeral homes in Wuhan over the
past two weeks, as family mem-
bers h ave been informed t hat they
may collect their loved ones’ re-
mains ahead of To mb-Sweeping
Day. Some waited six hours to
receive an urn, then t he a shes.
The Hankou funeral Home’s
crematorium was operating 19
hours a day, with male staffers
enlisted to help carry bodies. In
just two days, the home received
5,000 urns, the respected maga-
zine C aixin reported.
Using photos posted online, so-
cial media sleuths have estimated
that Wuhan funeral homes have
returned 3,500 urns a day since
march 23. That would imply a
death toll in Wuhan of about
42,000 — or 16 times the official
number. Another widely shared
calculation from radio free Asia,
based on Wuhan’s 8 4 furnaces
running n onstop and e ach crema-
tion taking an hour, put the death
toll at 4 6,800.
Wuhan residents say the activi-
ties belie the official statistics. “It
can’t be right... because the in-
cinerators have been working
round the clock, so how can s o few
people have died?” a man identi-
fied only by his surname, Zhang,
told r fA.
U.S. intelligence agencies have
reportedly concluded that China’s
official numbers are much lower
than r eality.Chinese foreign ministry
spokeswoman Hua Chunying s aid
Thursday that China has been
open and transparent about the
coronavirus outbreak, and she ac-
cused U.S. officials of making
“shameless” comments casting
doubt on Beijing’s accounting of
the toll.deaths not counted
Grandpa Gao had a fever and
difficulty breathing for two weeks,
but his family could not obtain
medical treatment for him. “That
was the darkest a nd the most cha-
otic time for Wuhan, and it was
every man for himself,” his grand-
son said.
Gao was never tested for the
coronavirus, but his family has no
doubt that the novel pathogen led
to his death. His wife fell sick later
in february, when coronavirus
tests became more plentiful, and
was confirmed as infected. She
remains in the hospital.
other families in Wuhan report
similar experiences.
When 49-year-old Liu Cheng
died feb. 12, officially of a “severe
infection in both lungs,” Liu Xiao-
bo was given a half-hour to get to
the care facility where his brother
had lived for five years after being
paralyzed.
He didn’t make it before his
brother was cremated. “It was
brutal for us, and what they didlacked the most basic respect for
the dead,” L iu said.
Like Grandpa Gao, Liu C heng is
not included in the official corona-
virus statistics. “my brother will
forever be among the thousands
of nameless dead,” Liu Xiaobo
said.
Public cemeteries in Wuhan
and surrounding Hubei province
have said their staff will sweep
tombs during the memorial peri-
od, and some private funeral com-
panies are offering to tend to
graves for paying customers, who
can watch on a live stream.
But this robs Chinese families
not only of a chance to honor their
deceased but also a rare opportu-
nity to get together for an outing,
eating and talking and traveling
side by side.
As China has developed, me-
tropolises have built cemeteries
on their outskirts to preserve ur-
ban land. That means tomb-
sweeping is a major undertaking
for many, involving traveling a
long distance, usually bumper-to-
bumper. So families make a day of
it.Funerals go online
Chinese authorities want none
of that this year.
Instead, the ministry of Civil
Affairs has told local authorities t o
“make full use” of online funeral
ceremonies and online tomb-sweeping, where people can per-
form electronic bows and make
digital offerings. on the Heavenly
Cemetery website, for example,
customers can upload photos and
videos of their deceased relatives
and offer them a virtual glass of
baijiu liquor, or light a virtual
cigar with a virtual lighter for a
few cents.
fu Shou Yuan, one of China’s
largest funeral providers,
launched an online tomb-sweep-
ing service a few years ago, but it
wasn’t particularly popular. “The
epidemic is encouraging more
people to have a try,” said Zhou
Chen, the company’s assistant
general manager.
The push t oward online memo-
rials promises other benefits for
China’s Communist rulers. I t gives
mourners an outlet other than
social media, where many have
railed against authorities’ han-
dling of the coronavirus and
where censors have been deleting
content they consider disruptive
to social stability. It also means
fewer people gathering in groups,
often a source of anxiety for the
country’s authoritarian leaders.
“funerals are a sad time, and
families might blame local offi-
cials for a sudden death, whether
it’s a car accident or an epidemic,”
said Andrew Kipnis, a professor of
anthropology at the Chinese Uni-
versity of Hong Kong who haswritten a book about Chinese ur-
ban funerals.
“many political movements
start with a martyr. There is a
strong relationship between
grieving and grievance,” Kipnis
said, noting that the death of a t op
party official, banished for his lib-
eral views, provided the spark for
the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-
tests.
That’s a worry for the party,
which faced unprecedented criti-
cism over its early response to the
coronavirus, especially its efforts
to suppress warnings from doc-
tors.
As the disparity between Chi-
na’s official and real death toll
draws scrutiny, s uch p olitical con-
cerns will only become more ur-
gent for China’s leaders.
Already, Wuhan families are
complaining about the lack of
space to mourn.
Chinese families “can do noth-
ing but swallow their grief and
indignation,” s aid Wu A kou, a Wu-
han woman who lined up for
hours t o collect ashes, i n an online
post that has since been deleted.
“I don’t get it. We’re allowed to
post about other countries’ trage-
dies, but not photos of our own
dead family members,” she wrote,
adding that Chinese leaders were
trying to “whitewash” the truth
about the e pidemic.
[email protected]Vcg/getty images
a person prays in front of a gravestone in Wuhan, china, in 20 11. This year, Tomb-Sweeping day — a centuries-old tradition when families clean up loved ones’ graves and
make offerings — falls on Saturday, but authorities have limited or banned the practice amid the coronavirus outbreak.BY ANNA FIFIELD
AND LYRIC LIfor at least two millennia, Chi-
nese people have headed to their
ancestors’ graves on the 15th day
after the s pring equinox to remove
weeds and brush away dirt, to
offer food and wine and paper
money so Grandma and Grandpa
can enjoy the afterlife.
Saturday is To mb-Sweeping
Day. But few will be tending to
graves this year, despite the many
recent coronavirus fatalities.
Thousands of families, especially
those in the outbreak’s epicenter,
Wuhan, have been unable to bury
their dead.
“No one in the family got to say
goodbye t o Grandpa o r see his face
one last time,” said Gao Yingwei,
an IT worker in Wuhan whose
grandfather, Gao Shixu, apparent-
ly succumbed to the novel corona-
virus on feb. 7. The 76-year-old
died at home; funeral workers in
hazmat suits came to collect his
body, telling the f amily it would be
cremated i mmediately.
“To this day, we have no idea
how his body was handled, where
his ashes are or when we will be
able to pick them up,” Gao said. “I
don’t even know which funeral
parlor those guys w ere from.”
Adding to the angst, tomb-
sweeping rituals — when huge
crowds flock to cemeteries — have
been either banned or severely
curtailed by authorities nation-
wide. While a limited number of
mourners with reservations will
be allowed into graveyards in Bei-
jing a nd Shanghai, t here w ill be no
such gatherings in Wuhan, where
the municipal government has
banned funeral ceremonies and
tomb-sweeping until a t least may.
This is ostensibly because of
health issues, but it also reflects
Beijing’s political desire, experts
say, t o deny emotional families the
chance to get together and com-
plain about the g overnment’s h an-
dling of the outbreak — a m atter of
acute sensitivity for the ruling
Communist Party.
The coronavirus pandemic rav-
aging the globe officially claimed
2,563 lives in Wuhan, where it
began in a market that sold exotic
animals for c onsumption. But evi-
dence emerging from the city as it
stirs from its two-month hiberna-
tion suggests that the real death
toll is exponentially higher.
Long lines have been forming a t
China
curtails
cemetery
rituals
Families denied a chance
to honor loved ones
in annual traditionthe streets, and the health system
is collapsed, so not everybody
who has symptoms can get tested
or treatment.”
A joint military-police opera-
tion has been recovering around
30 bodies per day, according to
Jorge Wated, coordinator of a
government task force assigned
to cope with the crisis. A strict
citywide curfew was complicat-
ing efforts by mortuary workers
and funeral homes to remove
bodies, Wated said in a nationally
televised address this week.
“We recognize any errors and
ask for forgiveness from those
who have had to wait to remove
their loved ones,” Wated said on
Twitter. But he also braced locals
for worse — warning that the
death toll could reach 3,500 dead
in the Guayaquil region alone.
“Everything depends on you,
on your discipline,” he said. He
urged the citizens of the city to
adhere to a lockdown and curfew.
Analysts say several factors
have contributed to the outsize
impact of the coronavirus on
Guayaquil. It’s an international
port city. Some impoverished
workers there initially put their
need to continue earning a living
ahead of calls for social distanc-
ing.
“The lockdowns were less ef-
fective in Guayaquil,” said Se-
bastián Hurtado, head of the
Ecuadoran political consulting
firm Prófitas. “In other parts of
the country, more people com-
plied. In Guayaquil, you also have
areas with no basic services, real-
ly small housing units and denserGuayaquil from Spain on Valen-
tine’s D ay. Since then, the crisis in
Guayaquil has ballooned, jump-
ing to more than 2,200 cases, or
roughly 70 percent of Ecuador’s
total, far surpassing the numbers
in Quito, the capital.
The outbreak has struck faster
than Guayaquil can cope. Hospi-
tals were quickly overwhelmed.
mortuary workers couldn’t, or
wouldn’t, collect the bodies —
some dead from the virus, some
apparently from other causes —
from homes. With daytime tem-
peratures topping 90 degrees in a
city where many live with no air
conditioning, some grieving fam-
ilies saw little option but to carry
days-old corpses outside.
The city’s struggle echoes those
of other hard-hit spots around
the globe where corpse control
has become a grim daily struggle.
The Italian army has mobilized
to haul cadavers out of devastated
Bergamo after the crematorium
there was overwhelmed. Authori-
ties in Iran have dug mass graves.
The Spanish military found el-
derly patients in care homes
abandoned and dead in their
beds.
Guayaquil could be a harbin-
ger of things to come as the
pandemic reaches deeper into the
ill-prepared developing world.
“The situation is dire in Guaya-
quil at this moment,” said Ta ti
Bertolucci, director for Latin
America and the Caribbean at
t he disaster relief organization
CArE. “There are dead bodies in
ecuador from a
In Ecuador, a wife’s plea:
‘Help him die with dignity’
Vicente gaibor del Pino /reuters
a worker sprays disinfectant on a car waiting in line to deliver a coffin to a cemetery in Guayaquil.
coronavirus cases in the port city have climbed to 2,200, or roughly 70 percent of ecuador’s total.