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RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) -Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, addressing the nation last month in a social media video, touted the latest in a string of unconventional drugs he says can ease the country’s COVID-19 crisis.
Helio Angotti Neto, chief of the Health Ministry s Science, Technology, Innovation and Strategic Inputs department attends a news conference in Brasilia, Brazil June 27, 2020. Carolina Antunes/Brazilian Presidency via REUTERS
Bolsonaro - a vaccine skeptic and promoter of discredited treatments such as hydroxychloroquine - said this new drug, Proxalutamide, would “soon be available to all Brazil.” He invited a little-known Health Ministry official, Helio Angotti, to expand on its promise.
Photography and reporting from Manaus, Brazil, by Dado Galdieri of Hilaea Media.
This story was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center.
When Marcelo Gordo opens the picnic cooler, the stench is suffocating. Three dead pied tamarin monkeys, their cream-and-caramel-colored coats visible through plastic wrap, are curled up inside. Gordo, a biologist at the Federal University of Amazonas, Manaus, explains that a student accidentally unplugged the freezer where he’d stored the monkeys, which had been killed on the road and given to him by city officials. Despite the decay, they are worth investigating.
Inside the spartan necropsy room at a veterinary school here, veterinarian Alessandra Nava and two graduate students pull on goggles, N95 masks, and blue nitrile gloves and begin to cut bits of tissue and collect bodily fluids from the monkeys. They pack the samples into vials to be transported to the Fiocruz Amazônia Biobank, a pathogen research collection that Nava helps
Slideshow ( 5 images )
MANACAPURU, Brazil (Reuters) - Health workers sped along the Amazon river this week to start vaccinating riverside communities, bringing hope to a region hard hit by COVID-19 and now facing a lethal surge driven by a new Brazilian variant of coronavirus.
Wearing protective masks and gowns, they traveled by open motorboat from Manacapuru, a town two hours from the jungle city of Manaus, where hospitals ran out of beds and oxygen last month and cemeteries could not dig graves fast enough to deal with Brazil’s highest death rate.
“I am happy you’ve come. We have lost so many old people and young ones too,” said 83-year-old Maria Araujo after receiving a dose of a British vaccine made by India’s Serum Institute.
Slideshow ( 5 images )
MANACAPURU, Brazil (Reuters) - Health workers sped along the Amazon river this week to start vaccinating riverside communities, bringing hope to a region hard hit by COVID-19 and now facing a lethal surge driven by a new Brazilian variant of coronavirus.
Wearing protective masks and gowns, they traveled by open motorboat from Manacapuru, a town two hours from the jungle city of Manaus, where hospitals ran out of beds and oxygen last month and cemeteries could not dig graves fast enough to deal with Brazil’s highest death rate.
“I am happy you’ve come. We have lost so many old people and young ones too,” said 83-year-old Maria Araujo after receiving a dose of a British vaccine made by India’s Serum Institute.