The plague in Brazil has reached the level of catastrophe as hospitals run out of oxygen for respiration • "Forced to return patients to their homes" • While the country fears a new mutation, the immunization program is faltering
Evacuation of a dead body from a corona at a hospital in Manaus // Photo: AFP
Health disaster in Brazil: The hospitals in the city of Manaus in the state of Amazonas in Brazil announced today (Sunday) that they have run out of oxygen for the souls of Corona patients and that they will soon be forced to return patients to their homes.
The South American country has recorded more than 1,000 deaths from the plague in the last five days and is second only to the United States in the number of deaths.
A senior local government official in the state of Amazonia has warned of mass mortality in the capital, Manaus, if medical equipment shipments are not stepped up.
Jasmine Orlena, of the Picros-Amazon Scientific Research Institute, told AFP that some of the hospitals in Manaus have become "death halls" where patients are slowly suffocating to death.
Brazil's vice president, Hamilton Moreau, has uploaded to his Twitter account a video showing the Brazilian Air Force transporting medical equipment and oxygen balloons to the Amazon region.
Meanwhile a video of local medicine has gone viral in which she begs for help.
"The oxygen has run out and a lot of people are dying. For those who have oxygen balloons, please bring them to us, there are so many dying people here," the unidentified doctor said in the video.
Experts fear that the rapid rise in the rate of infection and morbidity in the country is due to the spread of a new mutation of the virus.
Seven Brazilian citizens diagnosed with blue in the new strain of corona were located in Japan and all came from the state of Amazonia in Brazil.
In the face of the severe crisis that Brazil is experiencing, government efforts to bring about the immunization of the population are facing bureaucratic and economic difficulties.
Brazil has not yet approved for use even one vaccine, and planning to produce the Russian vaccine "Sputnik 5" in Brazil's territory has encountered ongoing delays.
"The experts did not listen to us, endlessly postponed the process of approving and building the immunization plan and now everything is done in a hurry," said Dr. Regina Plazzino, a public health expert at the Brazilian Ministry of Health. Ir Bolsenaro said over the weekend that a survey he conducted showed that less than half of Brazilians were willing to get vaccinated, and polls conducted by professional institutes in the country show that the rate of those willing to get vaccinated is closer to seventy percent.