Peruvians turn out to vote as pandemic records record deaths

Peruvians go to vote this Sunday to elect the president of the Republic and congressmen in the general elections while the pandemic registers another record number of deaths in their country due to COVID-19, with 384 deaths in the last 24 hours, according to the official report of the Ministry of Health.

At the height of the COVID-19 peak, the total number of deaths with a confirmed diagnosis of the new coronavirus so far in the pandemic rose to 54,669, with 384 deaths recorded on Friday, the highest number ever reported in Peru in a single day.

However, figures from the National Death Information System (Sinadef) give a total of 147,851 deaths in the same period in Peru, including those with a confirmed diagnosis and those presumed dead from the virus, as well as 898 deaths in the last 24 hours.

The increase in fatalities reveals the severity of the disease in several regions of the country, whose health services are overcrowded with patients and also suffer from a worrying shortage of medical oxygen, as in the northern city of Talara, which on Friday reported 12 deaths of patients in the local hospital, which ran out of this essential supply.

According to the ministry's report, the number of infected patients rose to 1,639,767, with 4,164 confirmed in the last few hours, and 14,943 hospitalised, of whom 744 were admitted on the last day.

In addition, the number of patients admitted to Intensive Care Units rose to 2,321, with eight new cases in the last 24 hours.

In Peru, more than 9.9 million tests have already been carried out to rule out the disease and 647,987 people have been vaccinated, mainly in the health sector, the armed forces and police, as well as those over 85 years of age.

A third presidential candidate, Marco Arana of the Frente Amplio movement, has tested positive for COVID-19 and cannot vote this Sunday, as can his rivals George Forsyth of the Victoria Nacional party and José Vega of Unión por el Perú.

Due to the danger of exposure to the virus, polling stations have been doubled and located in open-air venues, such as parks and sports fields, and voting hours have been extended to twelve continuous hours.