COVID-19 has no boundaries: Teen dies as virus reaches remote Amazon tribe, Brazil says
The coronavirus pandemic has reached a remote indigenous community in the Amazon. A teenage boy became the first member of the Yanomami to die from the virus, Reuters reports.
The Yanomami is a mostly isolated tribe of about 26,000 that lives in the Amazon along Brazil’s border with Venezuela, according to the news service.
Fifteen-year-old Alvanei Xirixan died Thursday after he was taken to a hospital in northern Brazil, the Agence France Presse reports. The teen went to the hospital April 3 with shortness of breath, chest pains, sore throat and fever, according to Brazilian newspaper Globo.
The teen went back to the indigenous area last month after schools were closed because of the coronavirus pandemic, Globo reports.
“Today we confirmed a case (of the virus) among the Yanomami, which is very worrying,” Brazil’s Health Minister Luiz Henrique Mandetta said during a news conference this week, according to the AFP.
“We have to be triply cautious with (indigenous) communities, especially the ones that have very little contact with the outside world,” he said.
Cases of COVID-19 in Brazil have increased in recent weeks, and more than 18,000 have tested positive in the country as of Friday, according to Johns Hopkins University. Almost 1,000 people have died from the virus in Brazil.
At least seven people in Brazil’s indigenous population have tested positive for the virus, the AFP reports.
The teen was the third indigenous person in Brazil to die, according to Reuters. The two who died earlier were living in urban areas, the news agency said.
