Covid-stricken city in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest begs for oxygen cylinders

A health worker checks the temperature of the locals as she tests for Covid-19 at the Indigenous Park, a tribal community in the outskirts of Manaus, Amazonas state, Brazil (Edmar Barros/AP)

The biggest city in the Amazon rainforest, a region often described as “the Earth’s lungs”, has asked for more oxygen tanks to help treat coronavirus patients.

Despairing patients in overloaded hospitals waited as oxygen arrived to save some, but came too late for others.