The situation in the Ecuadoran capital Quito is critical due to the coronavirus epidemic, Health Minister Juan Carlos Zevallos warned.
Between April and July, public hospitals in Quito — home to 2.78mn — expanded their intensive care units from 61 to 162, Zevallos said in a nightly interview with the Teleamazonas network.
Demand for hospital beds grew “by 1.6 times” over the same period, he added.
“The situation in Quito, the situation in (the surrounding province) Pichincha, is in a critical situation, this means that the intensive care units are full,” he said.
However, he said hospitals had made adjustments to their inpatient and emergency departments so “there is not a patient who is not treated in Quito.”
According to official figures, the capital has 10,599 infections and is the second most affected city after Guayaquil.
Guayaquil was the epicentre of the epidemic with bodies left in the streets as hospitals were overwhelmed by an avalanche of patients after the first case was detected in the country on February 29.
Quito’s mayor Jorge Yunda warned in late June that health services in the capital were being overwhelmed.
To cope with the rising demand, beds had been adapted for use both with ventilators and for more sophisticated intensive care units, Zevallos said.
In mid-May Ecuador began to ease its lockdown, but authorities in Quito say the city may need to reimpose some measures after a notable increase in infections.
In the South American country, which has a population of 17.5mn, the epidemic has already infected more than 74,000 people and killed more than 5,300.
Meanwhile El Salvador President Nayib Bukele said he decided to postpone the country’s second phase of economic reopening, set to begin today, after consulting experts and the health ministry.
“After listening to the opinions of experts and, above all, the ministry of health... I have decided to suspend phase 2 of the economic reopening,” Bukele said on Twitter.
The president’s communication team said that the decision was due to a new rise in new cases of Covid-19. 
The country recorded 338 new infections between Friday and Saturday, its second highest daily increase. 
On July 14 the country had recorded 342 new cases. 
El Salvador started reopening its economy after a three-month lockdown in mid-June, though at the time Bukele warned that the Covid-19 pandemic was still in an intensive phase.
About 58% of non-essential economic activities were due to resume by July 6.
The original plan was to reactivate the entire economy by August 21.
The Central American country was one of the first in the region to impose a strict quarantine to contain the outbreak of the novel coronavirus.
Measures such as placing those violating the quarantine in special centres put Bukele on a collision course with the Supreme Court, which regarded some of them as unconstitutional.
The president would have preferred to keep the economy closed for longer, but the court forced him to negotiate with parliament, which was in favour of reopening.
El Salvador has confirmed 11,846 infections of the novel coronavirus and 335 deaths.


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