SAO PAULO (AP) – Dozens of COVID-19 patients in the largest city in the Amazon rainforest will be expelled from the state as the local health system collapses, authorities announced on Thursday, while declining stocks Oxygen tanks mean that some people start dying breathless at home.
Doctors in Manaus, a city of 2 million people, chose which patients to treat, and at least one of the city’s cemeteries asked mourning people to line up to enter and bury their dead. Patients in overcrowded hospitals waited desperately throughout the day when oxygen cylinders arrived to save some, but came too late for others.
The strains have led the Amazon government to say it will transport 235 oxygen-dependent patients who are not in intensive care units in five other states and the federal capital, Brasilia.
“I want to thank the rulers who shake our hand in a human gesture,” Amazon Governor Wilson Lima told a news conference on Thursday.
“Everyone looks at us when there’s a problem like Earth’s lungs,” he said, alluding to a common description of the Amazon. “It simply came to our notice then. Our people need this oxygen. ”
Many other governors and mayors in other parts of the country later offered help amid a stream of videos on social media in which troubled relatives of COVID-19 patients in Manaus asked followers to buy oxygen for them.
Brazilian Vice President Hamilton Mourão said on Twitter that the country’s air force had brought more than eight tons of hospital items to Manaus, including oxygen cylinders, beds and tents.
Federal prosecutors in the city, however, have called on a local judge to put pressure on President Jair Bolsonaro’s administration to step up its support. Prosecutors later said that day that the region’s main airlift for oxygen transport “needs to be repaired, which has stopped the emergency inflow.”
Neither the Air Force nor the Federal Ministry of Health responded to a request for comment from the Associated Press.
The US Embassy in Brasilia confirmed that it had received a request from local authorities to support the initiative, without providing details.
Authorities in Manaus recently called on the federal government to increase its oxygen supply to maintain the breathing of COVID-19 patients. The 14-day death toll in the city is nearing the peak of last year’s first wave of the coronavirus pandemic, according to official data.
In that first peak, Manaus consumed a maximum of 30,000 cubic meters (about 1 million cubic meters) of oxygen per day, and now the need has doubled to almost 70,000 cubic meters, according to White Martins, the multinational company that supplies oxygen to public hospitals in Manaus. At the press conference, the governor blamed the White Martins for the supply shortfall.
“Due to the strong impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, oxygen consumption in the city has increased exponentially in recent days compared to a volume that was already extremely high,” White Martins said in an email to the AP. “Demand is much higher than expected and … continues to grow significantly.”
The company added that the remote location of Manaus has a difficult logistics, requiring additional stocks to be transported by boat and plane. He also said he plans to bring supplies from neighboring Venezuela to ease difficulties in Manaus.
The governor also enacted several health restrictions, including suspending public transportation and setting a coverage heel between 7pm and 6am.
The new measures provoked protesters who carried Brazilian flags on the streets on Thursday morning. Lima, once seen as an ally of Bolsonaro, has faced criticism from supporters of the Conservative president for imposing new restrictions to stop the recent rise in the virus.
Bolsonaro downplayed the risks of the disease, saying the economic impact of the pandemic will kill more than the virus. His son Eduardo, a parliamentarian who heads Brazil’s lower house international relations committee, was one of many conservatives who asked their supporters in December to challenge social distancing and disobey orders to stay at home.
The Tribul Park, a community of more than 2,500 indigenous people on the outskirts of Manaus, has been without symptoms for more than two months with COVID-19 symptoms. In the last week, 29 people have given positive results, said Vanda Ortega, a volunteer nurse in the community. Two went to the emergency department, but no one has yet requested hospitalization.
“We are very worried,” said Ortega, who belongs to the Witoto ethnic group. “It’s chaos here in Manaus. There is no oxygen for anyone. ”
The increase in cases follows two months of more frequent meetings, first during the local elections in November, with large rallies and long queues of voters, followed by end-of-year festivities.
The city of Manaus declared a state of emergency on January 5. The decree allows the municipal government to temporarily contract staff, services and materials without public tenders. A separate decree suspends the authorization for events and revokes those already granted, while a third establishes telecommunications for non-essential municipal employees until March.
A paper published this week indicated that a new strain of coronavirus had been circulating in Manaus since mid-December. The paper said it raised concerns about greater transmissibility or reinfection potential, although such possibilities remain unproven.
A positive COVID-19 test does not reveal which variant of the virus the patient has, but it is likely that the new strain was partly responsible for driving the second wave of Manaus, according to Pedro Hallal, an epidemiologist who coordinates the Federal University program. Pelotas test, by far Brazil’s most comprehensive.
“If it was circulating in mid-December, now it’s probably circulating much more,” Hallal said by telephone. So I think at least some of the new infections are due to the new strain. We do not have definite data on it, but it is very probable “.
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Associated Press writer Mauricio Savarese reported the story in Sao Paulo, and AP writer David Biller reported from Rio de Janeiro.