Virus aid delivered to Amazon communities

Residents of communities living in the Uatuma Sustainable Development Reserve who remained isolated to prevent the spread of COVID-19 received aid packages to help endure the pandemic last week.

Members of Amazon Sustainable Foundation coordinated the action together with other NGO's, universities, the Amazonas state government and other institutions.

Five-hundred kits with essential products, including food, cleaning products, masks and flyers with information about COVID-19 were distributed among the more than 400 families of 20 communities.

Communities along the Uatuma river live from sustainable farming and development of forest land, where nature preservation is a priority. But due to the pandemic, residents have not been able to go to the cities to sell their products or to buy supplies.

"Certainly it helps not to spread COVID-19 in our community," said Marisa Nobre, resident of a community inside the reserve.

Just a few members of the NGO were allowed to enter these communities, where only the leaders of each community met with them and received the donations.

Preventive measures were taken to avoid contact with people from outside the reserve to avoid the spread of the virus.

The group also delivered medical supplies for health professionals living in the reserve.

As the number of cases and victims in the big cities keeps falling, the experts say the virus keeps spreading in the countryside.

Uatuma is about 300 km (186 miles) from Manaus, capital and only city with an Intensive Care Unit in the Amazon state.

Going from the reserve to the city can take more than four hours by land and if the weather conditions are bad, travelling on boat is even longer.

The state in the northern region of the Amazon rainforest has been one of the nation's hardest-hit.

Brazil registered by Wednesday almost 68,000 deaths and almost 1.75 milion confirmed cases.

Experts say that is a significant undercount due to lack of testing.

The Latin-American country has the world's second-highest rate of victims and cases of COVID-19, after the United States.