Oxygen deficiency plunges the Amazon capital into a Covid nightmare

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Brazil is one of the hardest hit countries in the pandemic, but the situation in the Amazon is even worse. Graves are hastily dug in uneven rows, hospitals are inundated, some patients are flown elsewhere for treatment, and there are reports that a recovering Covid-19 patient has been reinfected by a more contagious variant that recently surfaced in the area.

Now, medical facilities in Manaus, the largest city and capital of the state of Amazonas, are dangerously low in oxygen after running out completely earlier this month. On Wednesday, the Pope said he prayed especially for the people of Manaus. According to a study published in Science in December, an estimated 76% of the city’s population has detectable antibodies, a percentage nearly three times that of the country’s original coronavirus epicenter: Sao Paulo.

Amid the oxygen shortage, hospitals were forced to transfer dozens of premature babies to other states, while the federal government rushed and stumbled to send supplies to the remote region. Social media influencers and celebrities chartered private planes full of tanks to the Amazon, and even Venezuela, South America’s most unstable country, began sending trucks of oxygen across the border.

On the ground, families who need the precious jerry cans struggle to find enough oxygen to keep loved ones alive. In the far north of Manaus, in a small red house that backs out into the rainforest, the Vasconcelos de Jesus family gather in their son’s bedroom, where two large green oxygen tanks keep him alive. 10-year-old Davi Emanuel lies in a vegetative state in a bed that his mother has decorated with photos of her son during happier days, before 2018, when he contracted the H1N1 virus and was left comatose and dependent on oxygen. Now Davi Emanuel and his parents have all contracted Covid, sending friends and family racing to fill his quickly depleted oxygen bottles before the town runs out of supplies.

Vaccines aren’t going to come to the rescue anytime soon. Brazil is lagging behind neighboring countries in the race to inoculate, and Manaus suspended shots for 24 hours, just three days after the first batch arrived, as it was unable to distribute doses properly.

After several family members became ill with the virus, 26-year-old Amanda Larrat helped family members set up hospital-like facilities in their homes, going so far as to contract a private doctor to care for the group. “I don’t trust the public health system,” she told Bloomberg photographer Jonne Roriz. “I’m not letting my whole family die.”

Most families in the Amazon, one of Brazil’s poorest regions, don’t have the ability to do the same. In some cases, health care professionals have told the families of hospital patients to wait in line at an oxygen filling station and drag the jerry cans back to the bed. Other families are trying to secure oxygen for home use, hoping to avoid the hospitals.

This week, 40-year-old Helmo Queiroz waited in line from 7am until after midnight to fill up an oxygen tank for his sister, who was home sick from Covid. A tank fill in Manaus earlier in January cost 100 reais ($ 18), but the shortage caused the price to increase sixfold within a week, he said. Queiroz feared that if he took his sister to the hospital, she would die. The refill would 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 native nurse, was the first to be vaccinated. Ortega is a member of the Witoto, a tribe of 700 families that is one of 63 indigenous peoples in Amazonas, the Brazilian state with the largest such population.

Throughout the pandemic, remote indigenous communities have fought for equal access to medical services. Although the state has a dedicated indigenous health department, resources often go to demarcated indigenous areas in the forest rather than urban communities like Ortega’s.

She lives in an impoverished neighborhood in Manaus called Park of the Tribes, with no health clinic nearby. Ortega has spent her hours off duty transporting medical supplies and equipment to her neighbors, fighting for hospital beds, and helping spread information on how to protect themselves from the virus, all while wearing a mask with the text “Indigenous Lives Matter”. She helped the community set up an indigenous hospital, where four infected patients today lie in hammocks in a closed space with an open roof.

The Federal Department of Health said in a Jan. 21 statement that 6 million doses of the Coronavac vaccine, made available through the Butantan Institute, were distributed to state and city governments “in a proportionate and equal manner,” but that responsibility for distribution would fall to the ground with the local authorities.

That process has already encountered obstacles.

Just hours after the first vaccines were injected on live TV into the arms of representative patients such as Ortega, the children of a few wealthy Manaus families announced on social media that they had also received recordings. Amazonas State Court of Auditors is investigating the matter; The president said on Wednesday that the court would “not allow any form of political interference in the vaccination campaign” and that anyone caught receiving the vaccine before their turn would be punished.

– With the help of Martha Viotti Beck