Amid warnings of extreme oxygen shortages and desperate workers, hospitals in the Brazilian city of Manaus have reached a breaking point when treating Covid-19 patients. The area, in the state of Amazonas, has seen an increase in deaths and infections. Health professionals, cited by local media, cautioned that "many people" would die because of a lack of supplies and assistance. More than 205,000 virus deaths have been reported in Brazil - the second-highest number in the world, behind the United States. A new strain of coronavirus has recently emerged in Brazil, with some cases traced back to the Amazon region among travelers arriving in Japan.
In the first wave of the pandemic, Amazonas suffered severe casualties, but a recent surge in infections is also badly affected. As officials declared a state of emergency, refrigerated containers were brought to hospitals to help store bodies last week. Jessem Orellana, of the scientific investigation institute of Fiocruz-Amazonia, told the AFP news agency that some hospitals in Manaus had "run out of oxygen" with some centres being "a type of suffocation chamber". The investigator told Brazilian media that she had received information in some hospitals from the front-line of "dramatic" scenes playing out. In the daily newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo, reports mentioned desperate workers having to try to keep patients alive through manual ventilation.