Pandemic crisis in Brazil likened to plague [Video]

• The pandemic crisis in Manaus, Brazil has become so severe that it was compared to a biological war and the plague.
• Several patients had to be airlifted to other parts of the country as the city hospitals were already overcrowded.
• A news cameraman likened the situation he witnessed to the plague in medieval times, which had “people dropping like flies.”

A city in Brazil is suffering a pandemic crisis so severe that it has been likened by witnesses to the medieval plague.

The shortage of oxygen gas tanks is causing COVID-19 patients to suffocate to death, leading to a rapid increase in the coronavirus death toll in Manaus, the capital city of Amazonas.

Brazilian Predisent Jair Bolsonaro has been heavily criticized for his handling of the crisis in his country. Even before the new deadly strain of the disease emerged, Brazil has already been struggling with the virus. The country has the second highest COVID-19 death toll in the world, following the United States.

With so many patients still waiting to receive treatment in the city’s overcrowded hospitals, Manaus had to airlift some patients to other states.

The oxygen shortage has prompted Jessem Orellana from the Fiocruz-Amazonia Scientific Investigation Institute to compare Manaus hospitals to “a type of suffocation chamber.”

The crisis has become so severe that neighboring Venezuela, a country tthat has become bankrupt, had to lend a hand in providing much-needed oxygen supplies.

The city had to enlist the military to help them pick up patients with serious symptoms and transport them to other parts of the country.

The relatives of hospitalized Brazilians are now being handed oxygen canisters along with instructions so they can fill them up themselves and keep their loved ones alive.

Helcio da Silva Maia Neto, a resident who volunteered to help refill the canisters, told Sky News, “There are more people dying here than in war times, we are living a war, literally, a biological war in our cities… our city.”

“I’m struggling every day to refill these canisters, facing these difficulties. I’ve been here in this queue since last night to refill three canisters.”

Medical workers and healthcare volunteers are saddened by the situation — one shared that they are forced to choose which patients to deprive of oxygen so that others can survive.

Jamie Kennerley, a cameraman for Sky News, spoke about the sight he witnessed: “It felt like we were covering a situation in medieval times, with a serious plague sweeping the population and people dropping like flies.”

Source: Mirror