Far from hospitals and often lacking basic infrastructure, Brazil's indigenous people are dying at an alarming rate from Covid-19 with little help in sight.
The mortality rate is double that of the rest of Brazil's population, according to advocacy group Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil which tracks the number of cases and deaths among the country's 900,000 indigenous people.
"The coronavirus has taken advantage of years of public neglect," said Dinaman Tuxa, APIB's executive coordinator and a member of the Tuxa people in northeastern Brazil. "Our communities are often in remote, inhospitable regions without access or infrastructure." So far, there haven't been any confirmed cases in Tuxa, but he doesn't know how long they will be able to stave off the virus. More than 60 indigenous communities have confirmed Covid-19 cases, many of them in the Amazon region, where people can only get to hospitals by boat or airplane.
The northern and northeastern states have been among the hardest hit by the coronavirus in Brazil. Most of the Covid-19 deaths in indigenous people have occurred in Amazonas, one of the states with the highest infection rates where local officials have warned that the health system was collapsing back in March.
The first trimester of 2020 had already seen a more than 50% increase in deforestation compared to last year, according to INPE data.
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