TABATINGA, Brazil (Reuters) – Brazilian military on Tuesday flown medical personnel and 1,000 doses of Chinese vaccine deep into the Amazon rainforest to inoculate indigenous people against the coronavirus.
Isabel Ticuna, 68, was the first to receive the vaccine in Umariaçu, a village of wooden houses on the banks of the Amazon River. The village is a remote community near the border of Peru and Colombia.
“Vaccination is so important to our entire indigenous community. This was what we were waiting for, ”she told Reuters after receiving an injection of the CoronaVac injection developed by Sinovac Biotech of China.
Villagers clapped when she got her injection, a collective show of relief for a community that has seen 37 residents die from COVID-19 and some 2,000 more infected.
“I was so concerned, but this D-Day has finally arrived after so many deaths here and in the world,” said Tarcis Marques Ticuna, the village doctor. “This is hope for us.”
Brazil’s more than 800,000 indigenous peoples have been badly affected by the pandemic sweeping through their villages, many of them days away from the nearest medical post by riverboat.
According to the APIB tribal umbrella organization, the coronavirus killed 926 indigenous people in Brazil and infected more than 46,000.
Anthropologists have warned that the communal way of life, with families sharing homes, precludes social aloofness and makes them particularly vulnerable to contamination.
Brazil’s right-wing government has been criticized for its slow response to the pandemic that has killed more than 210,000 Brazilians so far.
Reporting by Leonardo Benassatto and Adriano Machado; Written by Anthony Boadle; Editing by Rosalba O’Brien