A first case of coronavirus contamination among the Waorani natives, who live in the Amazon, has been identified, announced the Ecuadorian Ministry of Health on Sunday. The "first case of Covid-19 reported in the Waorani community" is "a 17-year-old pregnant woman who had the first symptoms on May 4," the ministry said in a statement. The young woman was transferred to a hospital in Quito where "she is isolated," it was added, without specifying the patient's state of health.
After becoming aware of this contamination, the government, in collaboration with indigenous officials, received 40 people from the Miwaguno community (east of Ecuador), with whom the young woman had contact. “Seventeen citizens had a history of respiratory symptoms. On this date, six of them show symptoms. Twenty rapid tests were carried out and seven by nasopharyngeal swabs , " said the Ministry of Health, without giving the results of the tests.
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Ecuador, one of the Latin American countries most affected by the epidemic (more than 33,000 cases and around 2,700 deaths), has been living in containment for two months.
The spread of the coronavirus among the natives "could be catastrophic and highly lethal" because they "do not have the defenses that allow them to resist and generate antibodies to fight various diseases, including this new virus" , were alarmed by Waorani organizations in a press release from the NGO Alliance for Human Rights of Ecuador.
More than 500 indigenous peoples, including 66 in voluntary isolation, occupy seven million square kilometers of the Amazon jungle, shared by nine countries, according to the Coordination of indigenous organizations of the Amazon basin (Coica). La Coica launched on May 7 an appeal to the international community to constitute a five million dollars "emergency fund" to protect the natives of the coronavirus and to avoid an "ethnocide" of the guardians of the largest tropical forest on the planet . Covid-19 disease has infected approximately 26,500 people and left 1,630 dead in the Amazon basin, according to Coica.
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