Covid-19: In Pará State, indigenous communities are facing neglect during pandemic outbreak

Indigenous populations in the southwest of Pará State are living through a critical situation as the coronavirus pandemic advances in the region. Between May 25th and June 18th, 22 local individuals died from Covid-19. The virus also infected 638 indigenous among the 12 different ethnicities that inhabit the area.

Facing government neglect and lack of public structure to aid the indigenous territories, a team of volunteers — researchers, public servants, missionaries, and concerned citizens from different federal universities, social movements and indigenous groups — formed the Mutual Indigenous Support Network of Southeast Pará. They demand medical supplies and complain about the under-reporting of Covid-19 cases, which is detrimental to the formation of an organized plan to fight the pandemic. The group says that the Special Secretariat of Indigenous Health (Sesai), linked to the Ministry of Health, is taking too long to test and detect the spread of the virus in the region, one of the main deforestation frontiers in the Amazon state of Pará.