The city of Manaus is said to have the highest Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) mortality rate in the entirety of Brazil, which has created mass chaos in many areas of the city. Reports claim that bodies are piling up in refrigerated trucks outside of overwhelmed hospitals, many of which do not have enough doctors to treat the influx of new patients.
There is also a crisis at the city's cemeteries, which apparently cannot handle the barrage of corpses that need to be buried or cremated. Consequently, bulldozers are reportedly having to dig mass graves in order to deal with this onslaught.
Despite all of this, the worst is yet to come, according to the AFP – though one could argue that the worst thus far has already arrived. In Manaus, the daily death rate associated with the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) has spiked from around 20-30 per day to about 100 per day. This came just weeks after the city reported its first case of the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) on March 13.
Not only is the city being bombarded, but so are vulnerable indigenous communities throughout the region, some of which are only accessible by boat. Reaching infected individuals in these areas is tough, and the health care system in Manaus simply cannot handle it.
"It is a scene out of a horror movie," stated Manaus Mayor Virgilio Neto to the AFP. "We are no longer in a state of emergency but rather of absolute calamity. People are dying at home, some perhaps because they [have] no medical care."
Listen below to The Health Ranger Report as Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, talks about how, based on his computations, the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) is between 56 and 100 times more deadly than seasonal influenza:
President Bolsonaro summons doctors from around Brazil to go to Manaus
While many of these home deaths have not been officially verified as Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) deaths, Neto fears that they are based on what is being reported about the severity of the pandemic.
Brazil has 27 state capitals, and Manaus is one of them with a population of around 1.7 million. And while other areas of Brazil may have more cases of the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19), Manaus is said to have the highest mortality rate of them all.
Early on, President Jair Bolsonaro was not too concerned about the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19). But now, there are officially more cases of it in Brazil than in any other Latin American country.
And the official numbers could be too low because very little testing for the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) is taking place in Brazil. Because of this, some public health experts believe that the true number of cases could be around 15 times higher than what is being reported.
Local authorities have tried to overcome the rising number of cases by building a new field hospital. Brazil's federal government has also called on doctors from around the country to come to Manaus to provide assistance.
But it could be too little, too late as Manaus is where all of Amazonas' intensive care units (ICUs) are located, as well as 80 percent of its specialized doctors. This means that there are no additional doctors or facilities available to deal with any more Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) patients.
"The system is truly centralized in the capital," stated Bernardo Albuquerque, an infectious disease expert at Amazonas Federal University, to the AFP.
To keep up with the latest news about the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19), be sure to check out Pandemic.news.
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