Oxygen Shortage Plunges the Amazon's Capital Into a Covid Nightmare
(Bloomberg) -- Brazil is one of the hardest-hit nations in the pandemic, but the situation in the Amazon region is even worse. Graves are being hastily dug in uneven rows, hospitals are overrun, some patients are being flown elsewhere for treatment and there are reports that one recovering Covid-19 patient was reinfected by a more contagious variant that recently surfaced in the area.
Now, medical facilities in Manaus, the biggest city and capital of Amazonas state, are dangerously low on oxygen after running out completely earlier this month. On Wednesday, the Pope said 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, a proportion nearly three times that of the country’s original coronavirus epicenter: Sao Paulo.
Amid the oxygen shortage, hospitals were forced 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 chartered private jets full of tanks to the Amazon, and even Venezuela, South America’s most unstable country, began sending trucks with oxygen across the border.
On the ground, families in need of the precious canisters struggle to find enough oxygen to keep loved ones alive. In the far north of Manaus, inside a little red house backing up to the rainforest, the Vasconcelos de Jesus family gathers in their son's bedroom, where two tall, 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 left comatose and dependent on oxygen. Now Davi Emanuel and his parents have all contracted Covid, leaving friends and family racing to fill up his quickly depleting oxygen cylinders before the city's supply runs out.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/oxygen-shortage-plunges-the-amazon-s-capital-into-a-covid-nightmare/ar-BB1d1xv2?li=BBnbcA1&ocid=DELLDHP