Oxygen shortage plunges the Amazon capital into a cute nightmare

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Brazil is one of the countries hardest hit in the pandemic, but the situation in the Amazon region is even worse. Graves are being hastily dug in uneven rows, hospitals are being raided, some patients are being flown elsewhere for treatment and there are reports that one Covid-19 patient who has recovered has been re-infected by a more contagious variant that has recently emerged in the area.

Medical facilities in Manaus, the largest city and capital of the state of Amazonas, are now depleted of oxygen after running out earlier this month. The pope said on Wednesday that he was praying 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, part of the country’s original epicenter in the coronavirus: Sao Paulo.

Amid the oxygen shortage, hospitals had to transfer dozens of premature babies to other states while the federal government scrambled and stumbled to send supplies to the remote region. Social media influencers and celebrities have rented private jets full of tanks to the Amazon, and even Venezuela, South America’s most unstable country, has begun sending oxygen-laden trucks across the border.

On the ground, families who need the precious containers are struggling to find enough oxygen to keep loved ones alive. In the far north of Manaus, in a small red house that supports the rainforest, the Vasconcelos de Jesus family gathers in their son’s bedroom, where two long, green oxygen tanks keep him alive. 10-year-old Davi Emanuel lies in a vegetative state in a bed his mother decorated with photos of her son during happier days, before 2018, when he contracted the H1N1 virus and was in a coma and dependent on oxygen . Now Davi Emanuel and his parents have contracted Covid and they have had friends and family rush to refill his rapidly depleting oxygen cylinders before the city’s stock runs out.

Vaccines will soon not come to the rescue. Brazil lagged behind neighboring countries in the race to vaccinate, and Manaus suspended shots for 24 hours just three days after his first batch arrived because he could not distribute the doses properly.

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

Most families in the Amazon, one of the poorest regions of Brazil, do not have the ability to do the same. In some cases, the health workers told families of patients admitted to the hospital to wait in line at an oxygen filling station and drag containers back to bed. Other families are trying to secure oxygen for home use in hopes of avoiding the hospitals.

This week, 40-year-old Helmo Queiroz waited in line from 7 a.m. to midnight to refill an oxygen tank for his sister, who was ill with Covid at home. A tank fill in Manaus in early January cost 100 reais ($ 18), but with the shortage, the price rose sixfold within a week. Queiroz was afraid she would die if he brought his sister to the hospital. The refill would only take five hours. “I will come back again this morning,” he said.

On the evening of January 18, the first vaccines against Covid-19 arrived in Manaus. Vanda Ortega, a 33-year-old indigenous 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 population.

During the pandemic, remote indigenous communities fought for equal access to medical services. Although the state has a special division for indigenous health, resources often go to demarcated indigenous areas in the forest rather than urban communities like those of Ortega.

She lives in a shabby Manaus neighborhood called Park of the Tribes, with no health clinic in the area. Ortega spent her work hours hauling medical supplies and equipment to her neighbors, fighting hospital beds and helping to spread information on how to protect against the virus, while wearing a mask with the caption “Indigenous life. ” She helped the community set up an indigenous hospital, where four infected patients lie in hammocks today, in a closed room with an open roof.

The federal Ministry of Health said in a statement dated January 21 that 6 million doses of Coronavac vaccine made available by the Butantan Institute are being distributed in a proportionate and egalitarian manner to state and municipal governments, but that the responsibility for the distribution on the land would fall to local authorities.

The process has already come to a head.

Hours after the first vaccines were injected on live TV into the arms of representative patients such as Ortega, the children of some wealthy Manaus families posted on social media that they too had been shot. The Amazon State Audit Office is investigating the matter; its president said on Wednesday that the court “will not allow any political interference in the vaccination campaign” and that anyone caught receiving the vaccine before their turn will be punished.

– Assisted by Martha Viotti Beck