COVID-19: la multiplicidad de la pandemia del 2020 en el sur del Ecuador

Abstract

This thesis explores the reality of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 in a rural area of southern Ecuador. Combining ethnographic and biomedical data, participant observation, and through my own experience as a front-line physician during the pandemic, this thesis analyzes the multiplicity of COVID-19, understanding it beyond its biomedical reality and showing historical inequities in public care systems. In conversation with medical anthropology and science and technology studies, this thesis uses three approaches: a) it describes the production of statistical data through digital infrastructures, showing that they are not neutral. At the same time, it illustrates the connections between the data and the measures taken in the management of the pandemic; b) it relates the management of the pandemic to the inability to respond to disasters due to historical deficiencies in the public health system; and c) it details the improvisations that both professional and non-professional caregivers have had to devise to care for their patients.