RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) – The city of Manaus in the Amazon has started administering vaccines against the coronavirus, which offers a ray of hope for the largest city in the rainforest whose health system is collapsing amid an increase in infections and shrinking oxygen supply.
The government of the Amazon, Wilson Lima, led a ceremony that started the vaccination campaign on Monday night in Manaus, an isolated city on the river of 2.2 million people.
Vanda Ortega (33), a member of the Witoto ethnicity and a nurse, received the first dose of CoronaVac, a vaccine developed by the bio-pharmaceutical company Sinovac in Beijing.
“I want to thank God and our ancestors,” Ortega said. She is also a volunteer nurse in her native community.
Brazil on Monday began launching its 6 million-dose national CoronaVac vaccination program in nearly a dozen states, hoping to receive 46 million doses by April to distribute among the states. Amazonas received 256,000 doses.
The state government began distributing the doses to municipalities on Tuesday. The priority in the first vaccination phase is health workers, the elderly over the age of 80 and indigenous people in about 265 villages.
According to official figures, Amazonas has recorded at least 232,000 cases of the virus since the start of the pandemic. The state is in the midst of a devastating revival of infections and a lack of oxygen supply.
Hospitals in Manaus have admitted few new COVID-19 patients, causing many to suffer from the disease at home and some to die. And many doctors in Manaus had to choose which COVID-19 patients could breathe while desperate family members searched for oxygen tanks for their loved ones.
According to officials, the city receives an average of four flights a day from the Brazilian air force to boost oxygen supplies, as well as one load a day from the city of Belem near the mouth of the Amazon River.
According to the state, the government of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who regularly criticizes Bolsonaro, has approved the shipment of a caravan of trucks loaded with 107,000 cubic meters of oxygen that would arrive in Amazonas on Tuesday, according to the report. government.
Although Amazonas welcomed the support, Bolsonaro voiced criticism of Maduro.
“If you want to offer us oxygen, we will receive it without any problems,” Bolsonaro said Monday. ‘But he (Maduro) can also give his people first aid, right? The minimum wage there does not buy a pound of rice. ”
The Brazilian Ministry of Health on Sunday sent seven once-installed oxygen-generating plants, which will supply 100 oxygen.
Amazonas government transferred 18 patients by plane to the state of Goiás on Monday. According to the state health secretariat, the state has already transferred 112 patients to be treated in the Federal District, Brasilia and other states.
The collapse of the health care system in Manaus, which had already been hit by a critical situation last April, drew criticism from the government for allegedly not anticipating the problems. Thousands of people protested in cities across Brazil on Friday, the same day that images appeared in which desperate family members were seeking oxygen for loved ones.
Health Minister Eduardo Pazuello acknowledged on Monday that the federal government knew on January 8 that oxygen supply in the Amazon capital could run out, a week before people died in intensive care beds. The speed of hospitalizations has increased significantly in recent days and has not enabled the supplier business to meet demand, Pazuello said.
A new strain of the coronavirus has done the rounds in Manaus. There are concerns about greater transmissibility or re-infection potential, although such possibilities remain unproven.
A positive coronavirus test does not reveal what variant of the virus the patient has, but some epidemiologists have speculated that the new strain was at least partially responsible for managing Manaus’ second wave.
Jesem Orellana, an epidemiologist at the Fiocruz Amazonia Public Research Institute, said the increase in deaths in Manaus was not necessarily due to the new coronavirus mutation.
‘Since October, there has been a problem with overcrowding in hospitals. “People can not arrive early and eventually be admitted to hospital late, in a deteriorating condition,” Orellana told The Associated Press.
“Wherever there is a chaotic situation, mortality is higher, but not necessarily due to the severity of the infectious agent, but rather due to other factors: there are fewer doctors, health workers are tired, medicines are missing and ICUs are becoming overwhelmed, “Orellana added. “All of this creates a climate that favors premature death.”
___
Associated Press video journalist Fernando Crispim in Manaus contributed to this report.