Rachel Humphreys talk to the Guardian’s Latin American correspondent, Tom Phillips, about the Covid crisis in Brazil. A wave of infections linked to a new and seemingly more contagious variant has overwhelmed hospitals in Amazonas state, leaving many without the most basic of facilities. Conditions were so bleak that oxygen tankers were rushed across the border from Venezuela, the economically collapsed country next door, with its leader, Nicolás Maduro, disapproving of what he called “Jair Bolsonaro’s public health disaster.”
Tom tells Rachel about how the public has responded to Bolsonaro and how his government has dealt with this latest wave of infections. The vaccination began last Sunday, weeks after other Latin American countries such as Chile and Mexico. But Brazil, which has a population of 212 million, has so far secured just 6 million doses of China’s CoronaVac injection and 2 million of the AstraZeneca / Oxford vaccine.
Archive: YouTube – Airside TV – Manaus tour; BBC news; G1; Sky News; KondZilla – Bum Bum Tam Tam (2021); Al Jazeera; Bloomberg; France 24
Photo: Marcio James / AFP / Getty Images
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