Militiamen and traffickers from the Brazilian state of Rio de Janeiro imposed a mandatory curfew on favela communities in that region in order to halt the spread of the new coronavirus, according to the G1 news portal.
According to residents of the slums of Muzema, Rio das Pedras and Tijuquinha, located in the west of Rio de Janeiro, the messages were sent through social networks, and indicate to the population that they do not leave home after 8 pm (local time, 23:00 in Lisbon).
“Attention all residents of Rio das Pedras, Muzema and Tijuquinha! Curfew from 20:00 today. Anyone seen on the street after this time will learn to respect the next!”, Says the message released by G1.
“We want the best for the population. If the Government does not have the capacity to fix it, organized crime solves it”, indicates another message.
Until last Sunday, Rio de Janeiro had 186 cases of coronavirus, of the 1,546 registered in all of Brazil, being the second most affected state, behind São Paulo.
Covid-19 has also reached the favelas, with the Cidade de Deus community, also in the west of Rio de Janeiro, registering its first positive case last weekend, a situation that worries residents and specialists, due to the lack basic resources to face the pandemic.
“The arrival of the virus in the favelas should be the subject of structured planning by the city and the state and federal governments because, if everything is missing, the tendency is for this to spread so that control, that government entities are trying to maintain, be lost “, told Lusa Jota Marques, a resident of Cidade de Deus.
The lack of piped water is among the problems listed, which makes basic hygiene minimums impossible, such as effective hand washing.
“Our greatest fear, considering the peripheries of Brazil, is the lack of basic sanitation, which will harm not only the practice of prevention, but also harm when it comes to reducing contagion. For example, here, in the region of Cidade de Deus , there is no piped water. How can non-infected residents do their personal hygiene, and how will infected people take care of themselves in this process? “asked Jota Marques.
Although home isolation has been recommended as a preventive measure against the new coronavirus, Jota Marques, who is also a tutelary counselor in that region, ensures that this is impossible for most favela residents, who live in small shacks.
“It is impossible to remain in isolation. We are talking about regions where people live in shacks, where there is no way to isolate themselves. We are talking about a shack where, in one space, there is the kitchen, the living room and the bedroom. Almost nobody lives alone. There are at least two to three members in each family, living in a space that is the size of a room in a normal house “, described Marques à Lusa.
The new coronavirus, responsible for the covid-19 pandemic, has already infected more than 345,000 people worldwide, of whom more than 15,100 have died.
After appearing in China in December, the outbreak spread across the world, prompting the World Health Organization (WHO) to declare a pandemic situation.
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