• Hard-hit city of Cochabamba endorses chlorine dioxide
• Health ministry warns against use as 10 people poisoned

Long lines form every morning in one of the Bolivian cities hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic as desperate people wait to buy small bottles of chlorine dioxide, a toxic bleaching agent that has been falsely touted as a cure for Covid-19 and myriad other diseases.

The rush in the city of Cochabamba to buy a disinfectant known to cause harm to those who ingest it comes even after the Bolivian health ministry warned of its dangers and said at least five people had been poisoned after taking chlorine dioxide in La Paz, the capital.

Despite imposing an early lockdown, containment may be unravelling amid poverty, an underprepared health system and a bitter political standoff

When Pedro Flores and a group of fellow doctors arrived in the Beni, Bolivia’s tropical northern province, at the end of May, they knew the crisis caused by coronavirus would be severe. But what they found still left them shaken.

“The health system, public and private, collapsed,” said Flores. Many doctors in the regional capital of Trinidad fell ill. Other medical staff, terrified, locked themselves in at home or fled to remote farmhouses. As critically ill patients multiplied, the death toll began to climb.