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Chilean writer Luis Sepúlveda dies, victim of Covid-19

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Luis Sepúlveda, the first patient diagnosed with coronavirus in Asturias, died on Thursday. The Chilean writer based in Gijón for several years, had been hospitalized since February 29 at HUCA.

Sepúlveda arrived at HUCA on his own that afternoon. The day before, he went to the Covadonga Sanatorium in Gijón. At that time, his health condition did not appear to be serious. The next day, he returned and from there he was transferred to Oviedo with symptoms of pneumonia which turned out to be the result of infection with SARS-CoV-2.

The writer had just arrived from Póvoa de Varzim, in Portugal, after being one of the guests of the Correntes D’Escritas Literary Festival. With you traveled his wife, Carmen Yáñez, also a writer, as well as his friend, Miguel Rojo. None of them were infected with the new coronavirus. For weeks, Carmen Yáñez stayed in the same hospital as her husband, but all the tests performed were negative. Rojo never needed hospitalization or treatment.

During the month and a half that he was hospitalized, Sepúlveda recorded several episodes of worsening of his health condition, although all were controlled. However, despite some moments of stability, the writer has not left intensive care anymore and, in recent times, his condition has worsened further.

During this period, the HUCA intensive care unit went from having him as the first and only patient in Covid-19 to a very different situation, due to the spread of the virus in Spain. Numerous patients have passed through the facilities, many of whom have overcome the disease and are now in the ward or have already been discharged.

Several Portuguese writers, who were present at the same literary festival as the Chilean, revealed, at the time, to Plataforma that they wanted Luís Sepúlveda to recover quickly.

Luis Sepúlveda, writer, journalist and filmmaker born in the Chilean city of Ovalle in 1949, lived in Gijón since 1997. Arrested during the Pinochet regime, Sepúlveda left his country in 1977. After living in several countries on the American continent, he moved to Europe, where he first lived in Hamburg, Germany. In 1989, his novel “The old man who reads love stories” became a highly successful literary phenomenon.

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