Hospitals in Brazil’s largest state, Amazonas, are facing a crisis situation amid surging coronavirus infections, as oxygen supplies run short and hundreds of people wait in line for a hospital bed.
Brazilian Health Minister Eduardo Pazuello described the healthcare system in the state capital, Manaus, as being in “collapse” during a Facebook live with President Jair Bolsonaro on Thursday.
“I would say yes, there is a collapse in healthcare in Manaus. The line to get a hospital bed has grown a lot, today we have about 480 people waiting in line. And the reality is that there is a lower supply of oxygen — not an interruption, but a lower supply of oxygen,” he said.
The state government announced emergency measures Thursday — including a nighttime curfew, ban on mass transit and the airlifting of patients to other Brazilian states — as it grapples with the crisis.
Brazil’s Covid-19 death toll is the second highest in the world, behind only that of the United States. According to data from Johns Hopkins University, there have been more than 207,000 deaths from Covid-19 in Brazil and more than 8.3 million reported cases of coronavirus.
A Human Rights Watch (HRW) report published Wednesday accused Bolsonaro of having “tried to sabotage public health measures aimed at curbing the spread of Covid-19” earlier in the pandemic.
The latest surge in cases in Amazonas may be fueled by a new variant of the virus recently identified in Brazil. Manaus, globally known as the gateway to the Amazon region, also suffered badly in the first wave of the pandemic.
Gravediggers bury a Covid-19 victim while surrounded by relatives at the Nossa Senhora Aparecida cemetery in Manaus on January 13, 2021.
“Today we are in the most critical moment of the pandemic, one that has no precedent in the state of Amazonas. We are facing a lot of difficulty in getting medical supplies. And as everyone is following, our main difficulty now has been getting oxygen,” Amazonas Gov. Wilson Lima told a news conference Thursday.
Demand for oxygen is up fivefold over the past 15 days, according to the state government.
Some 235 patients will be airlifted to five other Brazilian states, the state government tweeted Thursday. It said the transfers were necessary due to the state’s oxygen shortages.
Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza said he had spoken with Lima and had offered immediately to send oxygen tanks. “Latin American solidarity above all!” he tweeted. Lima responded: “The people of Amazonas thank you!”
Minister: Vaccinations to start ‘in January’
Covid-19 vaccinations have yet to get underway in the country, despite its strong track record on national vaccination programs.
Speaking Thursday, Pazuello said Brazil would begin to inoculate people in January but did not specify a date.
“In January we will start vaccinating. In the beginning with 2, 6, or 8 million doses,” the health minister said. “And in February, we will have mass production, and our National Vaccination Program, which we’ve been doing for 45 years, will get ahead of everyone in the whole world, including the United States.”
The Brazilian Health Regulatory Agency (ANVISA) will meet on Sunday to decide whether to give emergency approvals to the Oxford/AstraZeneca and Sinovac vaccines, according to the official news agency, Agencia Brasil.
Bolsonaro has publicly second-guessed the urgency of immunization, disparaging “the rush for a vaccine” in comments made last month.
“The pandemic is really reaching its end, the numbers have showed this, we are dealing with small rises now,” he said, according to CNN Brasil. “But the rush for the vaccine is not justified because you are playing with people’s lives.”
In its World Report 2021, Human Rights Watch recalled how the right-wing President repeatedly downplayed the danger posed by the coronavirus, by calling it “a little flu” and by spreading misleading information about the pandemic.
Bolsonaro “refused to take measures to protect himself and the people around him; disseminated misleading information; and tried to block states from imposing social distancing rules,” said the report.
“His administration attempted to withhold Covid-19 data from the public. He fired his health minister for defending World Health Organization recommendations, and the replacement health minister quit in opposition to the president’s advocacy of an unproven drug to treat Covid-19.”
Ministry defends record on rights
Anna Livia Arida, Brazil’s associate director at Human Rights Watch, recognized the role of other government institutions such as the Supreme Court and Congress in helping to “block many, although not all, of Bolsonaro’s anti-rights policies.”
“The Supreme Court ruled against the Bolsonaro administration’s attempts to strip states of the authority to restrict people’s movements to contain the spread of Covid-19, to effectively suspend the access to information law, and to withhold Covid-19 data from the public,” an HRW news release accompanying the report said.
“Congress passed a bill forcing the government to provide emergency health care to Indigenous people, and the Supreme Court ordered the Bolsonaro administration to draft a plan to fight the spread of Covid-19 in Indigenous territories.”
According to CNN Brasil, the country’s Ministry of Women, Family and Human Rights issued a statement Wednesday arguing that the HRW report “ignores measures taken by the government to protect human rights during the pandemic.”
Numerous projects aimed to help children, adolescents, women and the elderly were mentioned in the statement, saying those were “a form of government aid to the socioeconomic developments that occurred in the pandemic,” according to CNN Brasil.
CNN has reached out to Bolsonaro’s office for comment.
The United Kingdom imposed a ban Friday on arrivals from Brazil, neighboring Latin American countries and Portugal, which has strong travel links with Brazil, amid concerns that the Brazilian coronavirus variant could spread to the UK.
British authorities are already battling to contain a more contagious variant first detected in the UK late last year.
UK Transport Minister Grant Shapps said that scientists who had examined the mutation discovered in Brazil were concerned “not so much that the vaccine won’t work, in fact scientists think that it will work, but just the fact that it’s more spreadable.”
