From the health sector, the Peruvian Government is presenting a comprehensive strategy to face the COVID-19 pandemic, Prime Minister Vicente Zeballos affirmed on Thursday.
"On the one hand, (there is) a social strategy based on promotion and prevention; on the other hand, a health strategy that sought to strengthen care at the first level (rapid response teams and lab networks); and also to strengthen and expand specialized care (immobilization, as well as expanding hospitalization and intensive care), with an additional component to build a humanitarian team for handling corpses," he expressed.
"And by the end of June, hospital beds will total 20,000, while ICU beds will amount to 2,000," he forecast.
Molecular and rapid tests
Another vital issue is related to carrying out virus detection tests, he said.
Within this framework, the Prime Minister commented that merely the Lima-based National Health Institute was operational, which used to process 200 samples a day.
"To date, we have acquired 1,733,883 rapid tests, to which over 500,000 are added; the latter are donated by private companies. That allowed us to grow in the control and screening of population groups," he stressed.
At the same time, Zeballos said that the Government accompanied the accreditation of new regional laboratories, "and today we have 15 laboratories located in 12 regions."
Concerning molecular tests, he reported that 350,471 units have been purchased to date, despite the difficult conditions on the international market, which for several weeks was closed.
"It was precisely for this reason that we decided to use rapid tests as an alternative method. As a proof that this decision was accurate, it can be verified that of the 135,905 cases detected as positive, 34,581 were detected with molecular tests, and 101,324 with rapid tests," he stated.