LA PAZ: Bolivian police said they recovered more than 400 bodies from streets and homes over a five-day period, with 85 percent of the dead believed to have had coronavirus. A total of 191 bodies were recovered in the Cochabamba metropolitan area alone from July 15-20, with another 141 collected in La Paz, national police director Coronel Ivan Rojas told journalists.

In the country’s biggest city, Santa Cruz, authorities recovered 68 bodies. The Santa Cruz metropolitan area is the worst affected by coronavirus in Bolivia and accounts for almost half of the country’s more than 60,000 cases. Some 85 percent of the bodies were “positive cases for COVID-19 and cases with COVID symptoms, so they will be recorded as suspected cases,” said Rojas.

The rest died of “other causes, meaning death from an illness or a violent cause,” he added. According to the national epidemiological office, the western regions of Cochabamba and La Paz are experiencing a “very rapid increase” in coronavirus cases. Andres Flores, director of the Forensic Investigations Institute, said that between April 1 and July 19 more than 3,000 bodies that were recovered outside of hospital settings had been identified as either confirmed or suspected coronavirus cases. Bolivia has recorded more than 2,200 confirmed coronavirus deaths among its 11 million population.

Mexico’s virus death

Meanwhile, Mexico has passed 40,000 deaths from the novel coronavirus pandemic as the country, which has the fourth-highest COVID-19 death toll in the world, struggles to contain the disease. A daily technical report recorded a total of 40,400 deaths from the virus, after adding 915 more fatalities in the last 24 hours. The first case in Mexico was detected on February 28. This week President Manuel Lopez Obrador vowed to improve health standards in the nation to help its combat the virus threat.

He pledged to protect those vulnerable to COVID-19, including tackling “diseases caused by hunger and poverty,” launching “a permanent campaign” to promote healthier eating and lifestyles, and treating hypertension, diabetes and obesity as a priority. “We want to remember those who died from the COVID-19 pandemic, and send a loving, fraternal hug to their relatives, to their friends,” Lopez Obrador said in a video released on social media. Mexico, with 127 million inhabitants, has the second-highest death toll in Latin America after Brazil, which has 80,000 deaths. — Agencies