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Updated August 18th, 2020 at 10:35 IST

Mass coronavirus testing in Peru's indigenous communities

Peruvian healthcare workers visited an impoverished indigenous community on the outskirts of the nation's capital on Monday to test them for COVID-19 and check on their overall health.

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Peruvian healthcare workers visited an impoverished indigenous community on the outskirts of the nation's capital on Monday to test them for COVID-19 and check on their overall health.

The Shipibo community consists of 250 families that live in overcrowded and precarious conditions on the banks of the heavily polluted Rimac River near Lima.

Last May, when authorities entered the community and tested the population, the number of infected was alarming.

More than 70% of the population was carrying the virus.

Authorities immediately put the community on lockdown, and no one was allowed to enter or leave for weeks.

Several deaths were reported within days due to COVID-19.

These Shipibo people have settled in an area known as Cantagallo.

When the first tests were conducted in May, the settlement became an epicentre for coronavirus, in a country already considered to be one of the most-infected in Latin America.

On Monday the Peruvian government sent a contingent of 30 healthcare workers under the supervision of the Ministry of Health to Cantagallo.

Now health authorities are hoping for a reprieve in the amount of infected within this indigenous community that was created in 2001 when 14 families moved there from the Peruvian Amazon basin and settled on the river banks near the Peruvian capital.

Since then, hundreds of more families have followed.

The Ministry of Health is supporting more than 1,000 Anti-Covi-19 Committees throughout the country to strengthen the frontline response and organise the community for protection and prevention.

The Shipibos in the Amazon are thought to number 20,000.

 

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Published August 18th, 2020 at 10:35 IST

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