Virus taking high toll in Brazil’s Amazon
As the pandemic assails Brazil, overwhelming it with more than 2 million infections and more than 84,000 deaths, the virus is taking an exceptionally high toll on the Amazon region and the people who have depended on its abundance for generations.
In Brazil, the six cities with the highest coronavirus exposure are all on the Amazon River, according to an expansive new study from Brazilian researchers that measured antibodies in the population.
The epidemic has spread so quickly and thoroughly along the river that in remote fishing and farming communities like Tefe, people have been as likely to get the virus as in New York City, home to one of the world’s worst outbreaks.
“It was all very fast,” said Isabel Delgado, 34, whose father, Felicindo, died of the virus shortly after falling ill in the small city of Coari. He had been born on the river, raised his family by it and built his life crafting furniture from the timber on its banks.
In the past four months, as the epidemic traveled from the biggest city in the Brazilian Amazon, Manaus, with its high-rises and factories, to villages deep in the interior, the fragile health care system has buckled under the onslaught. Cities and towns along the river have some of the highest deaths per capita in the country — often several times the national average.
The virus is exacting an especially high toll on indigenous people, a parallel to the past. Since the 1500s, waves of explorers have traveled the river, seeking gold, land and converts — and later, rubber, a resource that helped fuel the Industrial Revolution, changing the world. But with them, these outsiders brought violence and diseases like smallpox and measles, killing millions and wiping out entire communities.
“This is a place that has generated so much wealth for others,” said Charles Mann, a journalist who has written extensively on the history of the Americas, “and look at what’s happening to it.”
Indigenous people have been roughly six times more likely that white people to be infected with the coronavirus, according to the Brazilian study, and are dying in far-flung river villages untouched by electricity.
The region’s ability to confront the virus has been further weakened under President Jair Bolsonaro, who has publicly dismissed the epidemic, even though he has tested positive himself.
The virus has surged on his government’s watch, tearing through the nation. From his first days in office, Bolsonaro has made it clear that protecting the welfare of indigenous communities was not his priority, cutting their funding, whittling away at their protections and encouraging illegal encroachments into their territory.
The crisis in the Brazilian Amazon began in Manaus, a city of 2.2 million that has risen out of the forest in a jarring burst of concrete and glass, tapering at its edges to clusters of wooden homes perched on stilts, high above the water.
Manaus, the capital of Amazonas state, is now an industrial powerhouse, a major producer of motorcycles, with many foreign businesses. It is intimately connected to the rest of the world — its international airport sees about 250,000 passengers a month — and, through the river, to much of the Amazon region.
Manaus’ first documented case, confirmed on March 13, came from England. The patient had mild symptoms and quarantined at home, in a wealthier part of town, according to city health officials.
Soon, though, the virus seemed to be everywhere.
“We didn’t have any more beds — or even armchairs,” Dr. Alvaro Queiroz, 26, said of the days when his public hospital in Manaus was completely full. “People never stopped coming.”
At least 570 indigenous people in Brazil have died of the disease since March, according to an association that represents the country’s indigenous people. The vast majority of those deaths were in places connected to the river.
More than 18,000 indigenous people have been infected. Community leaders have reported entire villages confined to their hammocks, struggling to rise even to feed their children.