Thalita Rocha Lima was visiting an overcrowded Covid-19 ward in Manaus, the largest Brazilian city in the Amazon, this month, when her mother-in-law Maria and other patients suddenly became agitated and burst into sweat, sighing with their fingers in the air. has. became purple.
“I ran to check the equipment, and then I realized: there was no oxygen left,” she said. Said Rocha Lima, who rushed out into the hallway and shouted, “They’re going to die.”
The director of the hospital informed her that the oxygen supply was running low and did not know when it would become more, she said. Her mother-in-law, a 67-year-old retired nurse, suffocated about 14 hours after the oxygen ran out, along with others in her ward, Ms. Rocha Lima said.
As Covid-19 cases increase sharply in most parts of the world, a shortage of oxygen forces hospitals to ration them for patients, increasing the death toll from the coronavirus pandemic. The problem is particularly acute in the developing world, but has also affected hospitals in London and Los Angeles.
From Brazil to Zambia, overcrowded hospitals with too few resources demand emergency supply of oxygen. In Mexico and South Africa, people are running out of oxygen containers to try to avoid flooding the Covid-19 wards, causing prices to rise and making it harder for poorer families to rent tanks. In Mexico, armed bandits steal oxygen tanks.