NPR

The Worst Of COVID Should Be Over For One Hard-Hit Brazilian City. But It's Not

The jungle metropolis of Manaus had a terrible pandemic spring. A study estimates 76% of residents were exposed to the coronavirus. Researchers thought there couldn't be another surge. And yet...
Ulisses Xavier, 52, who has worked for 16 years at Nossa Senhora cemetery in Manaus, Brazil, makes wooden crosses to supplement his income. The cemetery has seen a surge in the number of new graves after the outbreak of COVID-19.

In Brazil's jungle metropolis of Manaus, nurse Francinete Simões thought she had seen the last COVID-19 death at the urgent care center where she works in July. Hospitals finally had space to take critical patients again after a violent initial wave of the virus left many of the city's dead in mass graves.

But in recent weeks, Simões says, hospitals are "filling up, and I'm seeing people die again." The state government has now ordered non-essential businesses to close between December 26 and January 10 as a virus containment measure for this city of 2.2 million.

The teeming port city's recent resurgence should sound an international alarm about, which tested blood donations over a series of months to count COVID cases, estimates the virus may have attacked as many as 76% of Manaus residents by October.

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