Lack of oxygen throws the capital of the Amazon into a Covid nightmare

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Brazil is one of the most affected nations in the pandemic, but the situation in the Amazon region is even worse. The graves are hastily dug in uneven rows, hospitals are overrun, some patients are being transported elsewhere for treatment and there are reports that a patient with Covid-19 recovery has been re-infected with a more contagious variant that has recently appeared in the area.

Now, medical facilities in Manaus, the largest city and capital of the state of Amazonas, are dangerously low in oxygen, after being completely depleted earlier this month. On Wednesday, the pope said he was praying especially for the people of Manaus. According to a study published in Science in December, it is estimated that 76% of the city’s population has detectable antibodies, a proportion almost three times higher than the original epicenter of the country’s coronavirus: Sao Paulo.

Amid oxygen shortages, hospitals have been forced to relocate dozens of premature babies to other states, while the federal government has rushed and prevented supplies from being sent to the remote region. Influential people on social media and celebrities rented private planes full of tanks to Amazon and even Venezuela, the most unstable country in South America, began sending oxygen trucks across the border.

On the ground, families in need of precious canisters are struggling to find enough oxygen to keep their loved ones alive. In the far north of Manaus, inside a red house that enters the rainforest, the Vasconcelos de Jesus family gathers in their son’s bedroom, where two tall, green oxygen tanks keep him alive. 10-year-old Davi Emanuel is in a vegetative state in a bed that his mother decorated with photos of her son in the happier days, before 2018, when he contracted the H1N1 virus and remained in a coma. oxygen dependent. Now, Davi Emanuel and his parents have hired Covid, leaving friends and family to compete to fill their rapidly depleting oxygen cylinders before the city’s supply runs out.

Vaccines will not be saved soon. Brazil lags behind neighboring countries in the inoculation race, and Manaus suspended the photos for 24 hours just three days after the arrival of its first batch because it could not distribute the doses properly.

After several family members fell ill with the virus, 26-year-old Amanda Larrat helped relatives set up their homes in hospitals, even hiring a private doctor to care for the group. “I don’t trust the public health system,” she told Bloomberg photographer Jonne Roriz. “I will not let my whole family die.”

Most families in the Amazon, one of the poorest regions in Brazil, do not have the capacity to do the same. In some cases, health professionals told the families of hospitalized patients to wait in line at an oxygen supply station and carry the canisters back to bed. Other families are trying to provide oxygen for home use, hoping to avoid hospitals.

This week, 40-year-old Helmo Queiroz waited in line from 7 a.m. to midnight to fill an oxygen tank for his sister, who was home with Covid. A refill of tanks in Manaus in early January cost 100 reais ($ 18), but because of the deficit, the price has risen six times in a week, he said. Queiroz feared that if he brought his sister to the hospital, she would die. Refilling will only take five hours. “I’ll be back in the morning,” he said.

On the evening of January 18, the first Covid-19 vaccines arrived in Manaus. Vanda Ortega, a 33-year-old local nurse, was the first to be vaccinated. Ortega is a member of Witoto, a tribe of 700 families, which is one of the 63 indigenous peoples of the Amazon, the Brazilian state with the largest population of its kind.

Throughout the pandemic, remote indigenous communities fought for equal access to health services. Although the state has a special department for indigenous health, resources are often directed to the forested indigenous territories, rather than to urban communities such as Ortega.

He lives in a poor neighborhood in Manaus, called the Tribal Park, with no health clinic nearby. Ortega spent his hours transporting medical supplies and equipment to his neighbors, fighting for hospital beds and helping to spread information on how to protect himself against the virus, all wearing a mask that reads “Indigenous Lives Matter.” She helped the community set up an indigenous hospital, where four infected patients lie in hammocks today, in a closed room with an open roof.

The federal health ministry said in a statement on January 21 that 6 million doses of Coronavac vaccine made available through the Butantan Institute were distributed to state and municipal governments “in a proportionate and equal manner,” but that responsibility for distribution on the ground will revert to the local authorities.

Already, this process has faced obstacles.

Just hours after the first vaccines were injected on live TV into the arms of representative patients such as Ortega, the children of several wealthy families in Manaus posted on social media that they had also been shot. The Court of Auditors of the state of Amazonas analyzes the problem; its president said on Wednesday that the court “will not allow any political interference in the vaccination campaign” and that anyone caught receiving the vaccine before his turn will be punished.

– With the assistance of Martha Viotti Beck