Even with vast under-reporting, Amazonas state has the highest number of deaths by COVID-19 per capita in the country with more than 1,700 fatal victims. Poor and crowded neighborhoods have been particularly affected. Unable to afford private consultations and fearing the chaos of the public health system, many only sought medical help when it was too late. Others preferred to die at home rather than alone at a hospital. Lima’s administration has come under fire for spending half a million dollars (2.9 million Brazilian reais) to buy 28 ventilators at quadruple the market price from a wine importer and distributor. The breathing machines were deemed inadequate for use on coronavirus patients after inspections by the regional council of medicine and Manaus’ health surveillance office. Lima denies any wrongdoing. Asked if he would have done anything differently to confront the virus, the governor shook his head. “Even if I had stopped it (economy), if I had closed the city for 30 days, no one goes in and no one goes out. At some point I would have had to open and at some point the virus would have gotten here,” he said. He admitted lack of testing makes it nearly impossible to have a clear idea how many people in the state are infected. The virus has spread upriver from Manaus, creeping into remote towns and indigenous territories to infect indigenous tribes. The sparsely populated but vast rainforest region is completely unprepared to cope. Some towns can’t get oxygen tanks refilled or don’t have breathing machines, forcing nurses to manually pump air into lungs. When they do have machines, power cuts frequently shut them down. Many patients are being airlifted to Manaus, the only place in the state of 4 million people with full intensive care units.
Renata Brito, 'Death and denial in Brazil’s Amazon capital', AP News