A bus driver from Guayaquil – Ecuador’s most populous city – was told by his landlady that there was a bad smell coming from one of the apartments. With the other tenants, he knocked down the door and found a dead body. “Due the state of decomposition, a few days must have passed … no one has returned to that house. Not even the relatives of the deceased man,” the driver – who wishes to remain anonymous – says.
Ecuador has nearly 4,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19, with most of the country’s deaths located in the Guayas province. With an exhausted healthcare system, people are dying outside of hospitals in their homes – both from coronavirus and other conditions – forcing families, neighbours and friends in this crowded city to leave bodies on the streets.