Hello, I'm Nula McGovern on the BBC World Service, and this is BBC OS conversations,

Venezuela's hospitals.

As Venezuela launches a vaccination program, we'll hear from two doctors in Caracas who are having to treat COVID patients under extremely difficult conditions.

50% of the biggest hospitals in Venezuela do not have running water.

Patients have to bring the water by themselves or the hospital receive war tanks once or twice a week. The United States of America is approaching 30 million confirmed cases of

coronavirus and it currently has the highest debt toll from the virus in the world.

Bells at Washington, D.C. National Cathedral, they recently told 500 times to mark the

terrible milestone of 500,000 lives lost in the US to COVID-19.

Back in March, at the height of the pandemic, New York became the nation's epicenter of the disease when hospitals and morgue were overrun.

Officials at Elmhurst Hospital in the City's Borough of Queens

describe the situation as apocalyptic.

To find out how the neighborhood of Elmhurst is fairing now and how Americans

are reflecting on those half a million deaths. I spoke to the head of the

Elmhurst Baptist Church, Reverend Tim Pantoya, and Ida de Os Reyes, she is a

nurse who is also a deacon at the church. And Eda began by telling me how

the community has been coping since March 2020. We've been trying to be responsible and do social distancing so we have done online

videos so that we can still be in touch with our congregation but since I do work in the hospital setting, I try to keep my

family safe, so I haven't really been visiting my elderly mother.

So that puts a little bit of a strain personally.

But I do see in the community from April of last year to what's going on now, there are more activity in the community.

Any sign of a vaccine for yourself or your neighbors?

I'm fully vaccinated since I do work in a hospital setting and my

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