Peru cartoonist chronicles country's virus crisis

Peruvian cartoonist Edilberto Jimenez grew inspired by COVID-19 victims and the difficulties they face in getting healthcare, turning it into 100 sketches portraying the pandemic in Peru.

According to Jimenez, inspiration hit him in the early months of 2020 after seeing a man laying on the street who people avoided to help, in fear of contracting COVID-19.

The scene reminded Jimenez the horrors of the armed conflict in Peru, between the Shining Path rebel group and the state forces, which left close to 70,000 deaths.

Jimenez's works were published under the name of "New Coronavirus and Good Government", selected from a corpus of 750 original drafts made while travelling across the country.

In the recent book, Jimenez said his chronicles portray the health emergency and social inequalities underlined as restrictions brought an economic crisis.

Thousands in Peru were left without medical attention and oxygen supplies ran scarce during months when the number of cases put to the limit hospitals' attention capacity.

Hundreds of thousands were impoverished in 2020 in Peru, with the country estimating its GDP feel for 11 points during that period.

Up until Thursday, Peruvian authorities had reported over 66,000 deaths and more than 173,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases, as the country also copes with a slow vaccination campaign that on early May reached only 2 percent of the population.