Amazon city scrambles to provide oxygen to COVID-19 patients
SAOPAULO>> Hospital staff and relatives of COVID-19 patients rushed to provide facilities with oxygen tanks just flown into the Amazon rainforest’s biggest city as doctors chose which patients would breathe amid dwindling stocks and an effort to airlift some of them to other states.
As heavy rain poured down Thursday in Manaus, Rafael Pereira carried a small tank containing five cubic meters of oxygen for his motherin-law at the 28 de Agosto hospital. He didn’t want to be interviewed because of his stress, but he looked relieved when the tank — which he said would aid her breathing for an additional two hours — was taken inside.
Health workers at the Hospital Universitario Getulio Vargas took empty cylinders to its oxygen provider in the hopes there would be some to retrieve. Usually, the provider picks up the cylinders and brings newly refilled ones.
Despairing patients in overloaded hospitals waited as oxygen arrived to save some, but came too late for others. At least one of the cemeteries of Manaus, a city of 2.2 million people, had mourners lining up to enter and bury their dead. Brazilian artists, soccer clubs and politicians used their platforms to cry for help.
Brazil’s air force said in a statement late Thursday that it had dispatched two planes with 18 tons of oxygen cylinders from Sao Paulo, with more planned to follow. The local government’s oxygen provider, multinational White Martins, said in a statement that it was considering diverting some of its supply from neighboring Venezuela. It wasn’t immediately clear whether this would be sufficient to address the spiraling crisis.
“Yes, there is a collapse in the health care system in Manaus. The line for beds is growing by a lot — we have 480 people waiting now,” Brazil’s health minister Eduardo Pazuello said in a Thursday night broadcast on social media. “We are starting to remove patients with less serious (conditions) to reduce the impact.”
Hospitals in Manaus admitted few new COVID-19 patients Thursday, suggesting many will suffer from the disease at home, and some may die.
“My grandmother died today because of lack of oxygen,” Mayline da Mata, 30, told The Associated Press outside one Manaus hospital. “My grandmother, 84 years old, couldn’t survive. She needed 15 liters, and there wasn’t enough.”
The strain prompted Amazonas state’s government to say it would transport 235 patients who depend on oxygen but aren’t in intensive care units to five other states and the federal capital, Brasilia.
“I want to thank those governors who are giving us their hand in a human gesture,” Amazonas Gov. Wilson Lima said at a news conference earlier Thursday.
“All of the world looks at us when there is a problem as the Earth’s lungs,” he said, alluding to a common description of the Amazon. “Now we are asking for help. Our people need this oxygen.”
Governors and mayors throughout the country offered help amid a flood of social media videos in which distraught relatives of COVID-19 patients in Manaus begged for people to buy them oxygen.
Federal prosecutors in the city, however, asked a local judge to pressure President Jair Bolsonaro’s administration to step up its support. The prosecutors said later that the main air force plane in the region for oxygen supply transportation “needs repair, which brought a halt to the emergency influx.”