In Brazil Amazon, help a flight away for many virus patients

SANTO ANTONIO DO ICA, Brazil (AP) — Residents of Santo Antonio do Ica hid from the sun under umbrellas as they waited anxiously for the twin turboprop plane to land in their town in the farthest reaches of the Brazilian Amazon.

Aboard the aircraft, doctor Daniel Siqueira and nurse Janete Vieira prepared for the day’s mission: the evacuation of two patients from the municipality of some 22,000 people. Because COVID-19 has slammed its small population, with almost 500 cases, the town has the highest incidence per capita of any Brazilian municipality, according to a compilation of official data by the G1 news portal.

The lives of 89-year-old Sildomar Castelo Branco and the town’s mayor, Abraão Lasmar, would be in the health workers’ hands until they landed in state capital of Manaus, some 550 miles (880 kilometers) away.

The sparsely populated but vast rainforest region is among Brazil’s hardest hit, with scattered riverside towns completely unprepared to cope with the virus that crept upriver from Manaus. 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 need higher level care — so they must wait for the puddlejumper to take them to Manaus, the only place in the state of 4 million people that has full intensive care units. While they wait, their conditions worsen.

“They managed to isolate the remote areas for a bit, but now (the virus) has invaded the remote areas, and there are a lot of patients getting worse who need to be brought to the capital,” said Siqueira. “If we leave them there, they would die.”

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This story was produced with the support of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

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