The novel coronavirus is spreading so fast among the indigenous people in the furthest parts of Brazil's Amazon rainforest that doctors are now evacuating critical COVID-19 patients by plane to the only intensive care units in the vast region.
Javier Alexndre Andres Cruz, 26, a Tikuna indigenous man and a patient, who suffers from the coronavirus disease , is helped by healthcare workers as he arrives from Tabatinga to Manaus, Brazil, May 18, 2020. REUTERS/Bruno Kelly
“The number of COVID-19 patients has increased a lot. We are flying more planes ; it’s the last opportunity to save their lives,” said Edson Santos Rodrigues, a pediatric doctor working on medevac planes for the state of Amazonas. The Brazilian government’s indigenous health service Sesai reported on Monday at least 23 indigenous people have died from COVID-19, the deadly illness caused by the coronavirus. The victims were in remote tribal territories, 11 of them in the upper reaches of the Amazon river bordering Colombia and Peru.
Three-quarters of the 540 confirmed cases of coronavirus among 40 tribes reported by APIB are in the Amazon where the pandemic has hit Manaus so badly that it was the first Brazilian city to run out of ICU beds, while its main cemetery buries the dead in collective graves.
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