Rachel Humphreys speaks with The Guardian’s Latin American correspondent, Tom Phillips, on the Covid crisis in Brazil. An increase in infections related to a seemingly more contagious new variant has overwhelmed hospitals in the state of Amazon, leaving many without the most basic supplies. Circumstances were so devastating that oxygen ships rushed to the border from Venezuela, the economically collapsed nation on the side, with its leader, Nicolás Maduro, denouncing what he called “the public health disaster of Jair Bolsonaro “.
Tom tells Rachel about how the public has reacted to Bolsonaro and how his government has treated this latest wave of infections. The inoculation began last Sunday, weeks after other Latin American countries such as Chile and Mexico. But Brazil, which has 212 million citizens, has so far secured only 6 million doses of China’s CoronaVac and two million of the AstraZeneca / Oxford vaccine.
Archive: YouTube – Airside TV – Manaus tour; BBC News; G1; Sky News; KondZilla – Bum Bum Tam Tam (2021); Al Jazeera; Bloomberg; France 24
Photography: Marcio James / AFP / Getty Images
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