First Yanomami Covid-19 death raises fears for Brazil's Indigenous peoples

According to The Guardian, a 15-year old Yanomami teenager has reportedly died after contracting Covid-19, further fueling fears over the disease’s potential to decimate Indigenous communities in the Amazon.

Health authorities named the victim as 15-year-old Alvanei Xirixana. Xirixana died on Thursday, April 9, 2020 after spending almost a week in intensive care in Boa Vista, a Brazilian city near the Yanomami’s Portugal-sized reserve.

The Folha de São Paulo newspaper reported that Xirixana was from Rehebe, a village along the Uraricoera River which wildcat goldminers use to illegally access the mineral-rich territory.

The website Amazônia Real said the village’s 70 or so members had been isolated, as well as the victim’s parents, five health workers and a local pilot.

According to the Guardian, “It was not clear how or where the teenager, who reportedly lived outside the reserve, had become infected, although reports have suggested Yanomami leaders suspect illegal gold prospectors could be responsible for bringing coronavirus into their 26,000-strong community.

According to NG, “This case marks the second death of an indigenous person in Brazil. The total number of confirmed infections among the country’s tribes now stands at seven, scattered across three Amazonian states. They include four Kokama relatives infected in the western state of Amazonas by a doctor from the indigenous health service who had recently returned from a conference in southern Brazil and failed to observe self-isolating protocols.

In the north-central Amazon state of Pará, post-mortem tests ordered by investigators confirmed that an 87-year-old Borari woman had died of COVID-19. Mourners turned out in droves for the woman’s funeral in late March, unaware that she carried the deadly virus and could transmit the disease. The attendance of hundreds at the ceremony has stoked fears that many more cases will surface in the days ahead, potentially overwhelming already fragile health care systems in the region.”

The young man’s death has brought back painful memories for the Yanomami as well as fears over the coronavirus’s potential to wreak havoc on Indigenous communities across North and South America.

During the 1070’s and 1080’s Yanomami communities were brought to their knees by epidemics caused by an influx of roadbuilders and gold miners. Some villages reportedly lost 50% of their population from measles and other easily communicable disease, such as COVID-19.

Brazilian health authorities have so far detected 24 suspected coronavirus cases among the country’s 850,000-strong Indigenous population, according to the official news agency, Agência Brasil.

“Indigenous people have lived with epidemics brought by the white man since the 16th century,” columnist Bernardo Mello Franco wrote in Brazil’s O Globo newspaper. “Now, with the arrival of coronavirus, the threat is back.”

Up to 20,000 illegal goldminers called garimpeiros are believed to be working in the area inhabited by the Yanomami along Brazil’s border with Venezuela.

Sofia Mendonça, a Brazilian public health physician who works with indigenous communities, said their eviction was essential if indigenous lives were to be saved.

“If we don’t get these people out of the [Indigenous] areas the chance of contagion is much greater,” Mendonça warned.

Local health authorities hope they are better prepared to protect the Yanomami than during past epidemics, with dozens of health posts now existing within their reserve.

One local health official stated, “There are some things in the past that left me traumatized and I hope these things don’t repeat themselves,” he said. “But I view the current situation with real, real pessimism.”