- Brazil is the second country in the world (after the United States) with the highest number of reported COVID-19 cases
- The Amazonian regions carry a high risk of infection – the inhabitants of the forest have much lower resistance to viruses
- President Jair Bolsonaro expelled MSF mission, explaining lack of government resources in the state treasury
With 212 million inhabitants, Brazil, the second most affected country in the world after the United States by COVID-19, seems almost helpless in the face of a large part of its territory, the Amazon, by the coronavirus.
The threat is enormous: the inhabitants of the Amazonian virgin forests living in isolation from the outside world have much lower immunity to viruses brought from other parts of the country by teams of legal and illegal seekers of valuable minerals in which these areas abound.
The Association of the Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB), which represents the local population, has warned of the disastrous consequences of Bolsonaro’s next controversial decision on the Amazon by announcing the expulsion of the MSF mission.
Late last month, he refused to provide government funding to fight COVID-19 in the region, citing “lack of funds” in the state coffers. He did so by vetoing by decree a law from the Brazilian Congress that required the government to organize health care for the population of this part of the country as “least immune to coronavirus infection.”
Meanwhile, the APIB statement reads, the virus has already attacked half of the Amazon’s indigenous communities, that is, at least 150 of the three hundred indigenous tribes. Deaths caused by the pandemic among the Amazon Indians increased by 580% in just one month.
According to the organization’s data, quoted on Friday by the Brazilian news portal Jornal do Brasil, out of 850,000. By the middle of this week, the indigenous Amazonians fell 26,443 people sick with the coronavirus, and at least 623 died. The dramatic situation prevails especially in seven Indian villages in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul inhabited by five thousand people. Doctors Without Borders were to help them in the first place.
Last week, Congress, in which opposition parties have the upper hand, resumed the battle these days over medical aid for the indigenous people of the Amazon.
– How can a politician holding public office refuse humanitarian aid in a pandemic situation? – the representatives of the Amazon peoples asked Bolsonaro with this question. The leaders of the Brazilian opposition are asking the same question.
Directly banning MSF in the Amazon was announced by Colonel Robson Santos de Silva, director of the Secretariat for Indigenous Peoples in the recently militarized ministry of health by Bolsonaro, headed by General Eduardo Pazuello – a specialist in military logistics.
Over the last 24 hours, 30,355 new cases of coronavirus infection and 1,054 more deaths have been registered across Brazil, the Brazilian health ministry said Friday evening, local time.
Research conducted by London’s Imperial College showed that this week, for the first time since April, the so-called The virus transmission rate has dropped to below 1 in Brazil, meaning each infected person infects less than 1 person. This may indicate that the pandemic in this country is weakening.
The total number of cases of infection since the beginning of the pandemic rose to over 3.5 million on Friday, and deaths to over 113,000.
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