COVID-19 Among the Amazon

Written by: Madeline Fasel

During the first six months of 2020, as well as the tail end of 2019 for some countries, the Coronavirus has swept across the globe, changing how we view disease and civil liberties.  Coronavirus, also known as COVID-19, is an illness caused by a virus that is spread person to person, according to the CDC. It is spread in many different ways, including close contact with an infected person, touching surfaces with the virus on it, etc. There have been waves of articles regarding how to avoid spreading the disease, how to practice safe social distancing, what to know about the disease, and so on. While there is a large debate on where the disease came from and when it truly became an issue, what cannot be contested is how quickly it has spread and impacted multiple cultures across the globe. First word cultures are getting mass media attention as multiple news outlets discuss hotspots such as Italy or China, though there are other cultures within third world countries who are not receiving the same media coverage and are continuously being forgotten about, which is not a new discussion during times where there is not a pandemic spreading throughout the world.

During this time, while many countries are requiring a mass quarantine to halt the spread of the virus, few are thinking of indigenous groups and their response to this disease.  Specifically, many groups within the Amazon are struggling and dying due to this disease. Some of the earliest reports of the Coronavirus in the Amazon come from late March and early April of 2020, despite reports of the virus spreading coming from as early as December of 2019. One example comes from a report by CNN on April 10, 2020. A 15-year-old boy from the Yanomami tribe in the Rehebe village had tested positive for the virus as of April 3^rd. He was in the intensive care unit of the Roraima General Hospital in Boa Vista since his positive testing and that was where he died, despite the hospital not revealing his cause of death. The Yanomami live in rural areas of northern Brazil and southern Venezuela. They are not in contact with as many people as every other American or European, yet the virus spread to this remote region. According to the Socio-Environmental Institute (ISA), miners illegally entered the area and came into contact with members of the tribe. Within this issue of COVID-19 impacting this indigenous group, there also comes the issue of illegal miners entering the area with no supervision and no punishment to them. In this case, one miner could have doomed an entire isolated tribe who would have had no other way of contracting the disease otherwise. Within Brazil as a whole, it has been reported that this is the third indigenous boy to die due to COVID-19.

Figure 1: Yanomami Tribe Members, https://www.survivalinternational.org/tribes/yanomami

  The leaders of the Yanomami have been begging officials to rid their area of these illegal miners long before COVID-19 hit. However, given the fact that they would be the source of the disease into the tribe, the issue has become more relevant than ever. However, no action has yet been taken in regards to punishment or implementation of fines to miners who illegally enter the territory of the Yanomami. In fact, the situation is heading down a darker path. President Jair Bolsonaro has been and continues to push towards legal mining operations inside of not only this community, but the Amazon as a whole. These miners are also possibly using this pandemic to hide their excursions into these indigenous territories, including the Yanomami who live near a prominent gold mine. While this is an issue in and of itself, it is highly important now more than ever to protect tribes like this from disease by safeguarding them and respecting their desires of self-isolation. It would be nearly impossible to contain disease once it enters the isolated tribes, given the nature of their chosen isolation. Now, with the realization that many individuals can also be asymptomatic, there comes the issue that more people could be positive with the virus who are unaware of their positive status.

Indigenous communities during this time are just as susceptible to COVID-19 as the rest of us are. While many are less worried about these people due to some tribes who practice isolation, there is still an equal chance of the disease spreading into these groups. Illegal mining operations are not the only way of bringing disease into isolated tribes. In fact, these illegal actions soon might become legal under certain political leaders. These are issues becoming prevalent not only during times of disease, but simply the everyday lives of those who choose to live a certain life that they might not always be granted thanks to outside powers.

Sources:

Kaur, Harmeet. “A Boy from a Remote Amazonian Tribe Has Died, Raising Concerns about Covid-19's Impact on Indigenous People.” CNN. Cable News Network, April 10, 2020. https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/10/world/yanomami-amazon-coronavirus-brazil-trnd/index.html.

“Situation Summary.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, April 19, 2020. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/summary.html

Trevisan/Hutukara, Guilherme Gnipper, and Felipe Fittipaldi. “First Coronavirus Deaths Reported in Indigenous Communities in the Amazon.” National Geographic, April 12, 2020. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/2020/04/first-coronavirus-deaths-indigenous-communities-amazon