Ecuador opens mobile centers for COVID-19 testing as hospitals fill up

As the coronavirus pandemic takes its toll on Ecuador's capital, Quito, authorities are deploying new sanitary mobile centers to ramp up testing and ease pressure on a health system that is being challenged again by a rapid rise in cases. Quito has become Ecuador's COVID-19 hotspot, with total cases recently overtaking those in Guayaquil, the country's second-largest city, which in March and April suffered one of Latin America's worst outbreaks.

As the coronavirus pandemic takes its toll on Ecuador's capital, Quito, authorities are deploying new sanitary mobile centers to ramp up testing and ease pressure on a health system that is being challenged again by a rapid rise in cases.

Quito has become Ecuador's COVID-19 hotspot, with total cases recently overtaking those in Guayaquil, the country's second-largest city, which in March and April suffered one of Latin America's worst outbreaks. Quito now has 12,747 cases, with Ecuador's total case count exceeding 82,000, according to figures released by the Health Ministry on Tuesday. Some 600 people have died in the capital, out of 5,584 deaths across the Andean nation.

The government says Quito is experiencing a "critical situation" as intensive care units have reached full capacity. Authorities are adapting other areas to attend to hundreds of patients in a bid to avoid what happened in Guayaquil, where many victims died at home due to a dearth of hospital beds. Authorities have set up tents in schools across Quito to conduct rapid tests and are providing diagnoses at cultural centers and a basketball stadium. Medical brigades dispatched by the Health Ministry are patrolling neighborhoods with high rates of infection to carry out spot tests.

"The first experience in Guayaquil was painful, but it helped us ... to improve our capabilities," the health minister, Juan Carlos Zevallos, said on state television.

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