A large supply of oxygen and one hundred and seven doctors from the Latin American College of Medicine in Caracas, Venezuela arrived on Saturday, January 16, 20201 in Manaus, the capital of Amazonas State in Brazil. The action comes after reports emerged that the city of 2.3 million people had run out of oxygen to treat Covid-19 patients who could not breathe, leaving healthcare workers to administer morphine to ease their suffering as they suffocated.
The oxygen travelled overland on eight trucks, each carrying 18 tonnes (80,000 litres) of the precious gas, on a 1,500-kilometer journey from Puerto Ordaz, near Venezuela’s Atlantic coast. The governor of Amazonas has also arranged for Brazilian trucks to travel in the opposite direction to pick up oxygen tanks from Venezuelan depots, in a direct negotiation superseding Brazil’s federal government, headed by Covid-denier Jair Bolsonaro.
The Brazilian president has made his lack of concern clear. “Everything is pandemic these days. I’m sorry for the dead, but we’re all going to die someday,” he declared, before adding, with some of his characteristic homophobia, that “Brazil needs to stop being a nation of fags.”
