Peru's health care workers protest lack of PPE

01:26

As Peru's COVID-19 confirmed cases have risen sharply in recent days, dozens of frontline health care workers protest on the streets for severe shortage of face masks and protective gears.

Nurses from public hospital in the capital Lima complain that they have been seeing dead bodies stored for days in public spaces. Others say they do not have enough medical equipment, including face masks, to protect themselves from the virus.

"We have to use three face masks for a whole month, so we re-use it and re-use it…Where I work, colleagues have become infected," Rosmini Ayquipa, a nurse said during the protest.

According to Johns Hopkins data, as of Wednesday, Peru has almost 18,000 COVID-19 patients and has the second highest number of confirmed case after Brazil in Latin America. Peruvian President worried that the rapid increase in the number of patients would soon exceed the hospital capacity in the country.

Fortunately, much-needed shipments of more than 300-thousand COVID-19 rapid tests have arrived from China. They came with sanitizer, masks and protective medical gear and will be distributed around the country.

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