In Peru, authorities allowed secret burials of virus victims

IQUITOS, Peru (AP) — When Adriana Wong reached the field in the Amazon forest, she was confused. There were dozens of crosses planted in the red soil, but nothing to distinguish her father’s grave.

“Are you sure my dad is there?” the 9-year-old asked her mother.

Glendy Hernández had no answers.

Almost a year ago, her husband and dozens of others who died of COVID-19 were secretly buried in this field in Iquitos, a city in Loreto state in the heart of the Peruvian Amazon. Local authorities approved the burials but never told the families, who believed their loved ones were in a local cemetery — and only months later discovered the truth.

In Peru, and in Latin America, it is the first known case of authorities concealing the fate of dozens of COVID-19 victims, and nobody is able to explain why the clandestine burials were held. The local government didn’t reply to several requests for comment from The Associated Press.

Family members told AP that at least 403 people were buried in that field.

The pandemic hit Peru hard in April 2020, and Iquitos was struggling -- to date, the country has seen more 52,000 deaths, 3,200 of them in Iquitos, a city of 550.000 people. In the early days, the area’s only two hospitals lacked sufficient space to attend COVID-19 patients.

In the early hours of April 30, camera repairman Herman Wong felt sick and struggled to breathe. Glendy took him at the hospital at 5 a.m., but the place was full of people and short of beds. She asked for help, but it was useless. At 11 a.m., he died on her arms.

Glendy fainted. When she awakened, a doctor told her to come the next day to pick up the body.

She did as she was told, bringing a coffin to the hospital. But she waited for hours until a hospital worker told her that her husband’s...