Why Brazilians are having to take the Covid crisis into their own hands – podcast

Tom Phillips, the Guardian’s Latin America correspondent, looks at the surge of infections in the Brazilian state of Amazonas that has left many hospitals without the most basic supplies and has prompted yet more protests against Bolsonaro

Rachel Humphreys talks to the Guardian’s Latin America correspondent, Tom Phillips, about the Covid crisis in Brazil. A surge in infections linked to a new and seemingly more contagious variant has overwhelmed hospitals in Amazonas state, leaving many without the most basic supplies. Circumstances were so bleak that oxygen tankers were rushed over the border from Venezuela, the economically collapsed nation next door, with its leader, Nicolás Maduro, decrying what he called “Jair Bolsonaro’s public health disaster”.

Tom tells Rachel about the way the public have reacted to Bolsonaro and his government’s handling of this latest wave of infections. Inoculation began last Sunday, weeks after other Latin American countries such as Chile and Mexico. But Brazil, which has 212 million citizens, has so far secured only 6m doses of China’s CoronaVac shot and 2m of the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine.

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