Salvadoran government accused of doctoring true extent of Covid deaths

Cemetery workers inter the coffin of a woman who died from Covid-19 at the Santa Tecla cemetery in El Salvador on 24 June 2020. Photograph: José Cabezas/Reuters

Nayib Bukele’s administration in El Salvador has come under fire from rights groups for apparently falsifying Covid-19 figures in an attempt to cover up the true cost of the pandemic.

Two-thirds of the country’s Covid-19 fatalities were left out of official figures in order to give the illusion that the authoritarian government had the pandemic under control, the Salvadoran newspaper La Prensa Gráfica reported on Monday.