Coronavirus ‘victim’ alive after family were told of her death and sent ashes

The family of a 74-year-old woman who had been declared dead due to coronavirus learned she was in fact alive, after the hospital treating her discovered they made a mistake.

On 27 March, Alba Maruri was admitted to an intensive care unit with a high fever and difficulty breathing. Later that same day, doctors told her family she had died and were shown the body from a distance.

A week later, the family were sent what they thought were her cremated remains.

But on Friday, Ms Maruri’s sister Aura told Reuters that health workers went to her home in Guayaquil, Ecuador, to inform them of a mistake.

Aura said: “An ambulance arrived with a doctor, a psychiatrist and the social worker. They apologised, and they tell us ‘Your sister is alive’ and we were in shock.

“It is a miracle of God what has happened.”

It was suspected that Ms Maruri had been infected by coronavirus, but was never diagnosed with it as she was not tested. Reports say she was unconscious for about three weeks, and curfew measures prevented her family from visiting her until Saturday.

Guayaquil is the hardest-hit city in Latin America, with 15,365 confirmed Covid-19 cases and 242 deaths so far. Mayor Cynthia Viteri said the pandemic hit the city like “an unexpected bomb falling on a peaceful town”.

She said: “It was the horror of a war, there were dead in the streets, dead in homes, there were dead outside of the hospitals.”

Overwhelmed hospitals led to medical personnel confusing names, resulting in Ms Maruri being “left for dead”, her nephew Juan Carlos Ramirez said on social media.

Ms Maruri woke up on Thursday and told doctors to call her sister. “The doctors went to my aunt’s [Aura] house to corroborate and report the error,” said Mr Ramirez, adding his aunt “is in good health” and that the family would be seeking a compensation from the hospital for the cost of the cremation and “the pain of the supposed death”.

No one knows whose ashes were delivered to the family by mistake. Aura said: “It is a miracle. For nearly a month we thought she was dead. Imagine. And I have someone else’s ashes.”

The mistake compounds the struggles being faced by Ecuador’s health system. The government has reported 22,719 cases and 576 deaths, with another 1,060 “probable” deaths of people who likely had the virus but had not been tested.