SAO PAULO (AP) – Dozens of COVID-19 patients in the Amazon rainforest’s largest city will be flown out of the state as the local health system collapses, authorities announced Thursday as diminishing supplies of oxygen tanks meant some people at home are out of breath died.
Doctors in Manaus, a city of 2 million people, chose which patients to treat, and at least one of the city’s cemeteries asked mourners to line up to enter and bury their dead. Patients in congested hospitals waited in desperation all day as oxygen bottles arrived to save some but were late for others.
The tensions led the Amazonas government to say it would transport 235 patients who depend on oxygen but are not in the intensive care unit to five other states and the federal capital Brasilia.
“I want to thank the governors who shake hands with us in a human gesture,” Amazonas Governor Wilson Lima said at a press conference on Thursday.
“The whole world looks to us when there’s a problem like the lungs of the Earth,” he said, referring to a general description of the Amazon. “Now we are asking for help. Our people need this oxygen. “
Many other governors and mayors elsewhere in the country later offered help amid a deluge of videos on social media in which distraught 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 supplies, including oxygen bottles, beds and tents, to Manaus.
However, federal prosecutors in the city asked a local judge to put pressure on President Jair Bolsonaro’s government to step up its support. Prosecutors said later today that the region’s main Air Force aircraft for transporting oxygen supplies “needs to be repaired, bringing emergency supplies to a halt.”
Neither the Air Force nor the Federal Department 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.
Manaus authorities recently called on the federal government to boost their dwindling supply of oxygen needed to keep COVID-19 patients breathing. According to official data, the city’s 14-day death toll is nearing the peak of the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic last year.
During that first peak, Manaus consumed up to 30,000 cubic meters (about 1 million cubic feet) of oxygen per day, and now the need has more than doubled to nearly 70,000 cubic meters, according to White Martins, the multinational corporation that provides oxygen to Manaus’ public hospitals. At his press conference, Governor White Martins blamed the shortage of supply.
“Due to the strong impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, oxygen consumption in the city has increased exponentially in recent days compared to an already extremely high volume,” White Martins said in an emailed statement to AP. “Demand is much higher than anything predictable and … continues to grow significantly.”
The company added that Manaus’s remote location offers challenging logistics, requiring additional supplies to be transported by boat and air. It also said it is considering sourcing supplies from neighboring Venezuela to ease troubles in Manaus.
The governor also issued more health restrictions, including the suspension of public transportation and the imposition of a curfew between 7 p.m. and 6 a.m.
The new measures challenged protesters who carried Brazilian flags through the streets on Thursday morning. Once seen as an ally of Bolsonaro, Lima has been criticized by supporters of the Conservative president for imposing new restrictions to stop the recent wave of the virus.
Bolsonaro has downplayed the risks of the disease, saying the economic impact of the pandemic will kill more than the virus. His son Eduardo, a legislator who heads the committee on international relations in Brazil’s lower house, was one of many conservatives who in December urged their supporters to challenge social distance and disobey orders.
Park of the Tribes, a community of more than 2,500 indigenous people in the suburbs of Manaus, went for more than two months with no resident showing any COVID-19 symptoms. In the past week, 29 people tested positive, said Vanda Ortega, a volunteer nurse in the community. Two of them went to the emergency room, but no one needs hospitalization yet.
“We are really concerned,” said Ortega, who is of the Witoto ethnicity. ‘It’s chaos here in Manaus. There is no oxygen for anyone. “
The wave of business follows two months of more frequent meetings, first during the local elections in November with large rallies and long lines of voters, followed by end-of-year celebrations.
The city of Manaus declared a state of emergency on January 5. The decree allows the municipal government to hire temporary personnel, services and equipment without a public tender. A separate decree suspends the authorization for events and revokes the authorizations already granted, while a third will set up teleworking for non-essential municipal employees until March.
A paper published this week indicated that a new strain of the coronavirus was circulating in Manaus in mid-December. The paper said this raised concerns about greater transmissibility or potential for reinfection, 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 at Federal University. coordinates. of the Pelotas test program, by far the most extensive in Brazil.
“If it was in circulation in mid-December, it probably circulated a lot more now,” Hallal said by phone. So I think at least some of the new infections are the result of the new strain. We don’t have the definitive data on it, but it is very likely. “
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Associated Press writer Mauricio Savarese reported this story in Sao Paulo and AP writer David Biller reported from Rio de Janeiro.