Coronavirus: Remote Amazon tribe records first Covid-19 death as experts fear indigenous people could be ‘wiped out’ by virus

Brazil’s health minister says case is ‘very worrying’ due to vulnerability of indigenous tribes

A remote Amazon tribe has recorded its first death related to Covid-19 after a teenager who tested positive for coronavirus fell critically ill, Brazilian health officials have said.

Alvanei Xirixan, a 15-year-old boy from the Yanomami indigenous group, died on Thursday night in intensive care at a hospital in Boa Vista, the capital of Roraima state, officials said, amid concerns about the vulnerability of indigenous people to foreign diseases.

Luiz Henrique Mandetta, Brazil’s health minister, said the case was “very worrying” when it was first reported on Wednesday.

“We have to be triply cautious with [indigenous] communities, especially the ones that have very little contact with the outside world,” he said.

The Brazilian ministry of health has set up a national crisis committee to monitor the effect of Covid-19 on indigenous communities, according to the country’s Globo news agency.

Anthropologists and health experts have warned coronavirus could have a devastating impact on the country's 850,000 indigenous people who are vulnerable to external diseases and whose lifestyle in tribal villages rules out social distancing.

“There is an incredible risk of the virus spreading across the native communities and wiping them out,” Dr Sofia Mendonça, a researcher at the Federal University of Sao Paulo (Unifesp), told the BBC last week.

Indigenous groups in the country have previously been seriously hurt by disease outbreaks - such as in the 1960s, when a measles outbreak among members of the Yanomami killed nearly 9 per cent of those infected.

The Yanomami group, which has been largely isolated from the rest of the world, contains approximately 35,000 people living in Brazil and Venezuela.

Globo has reported at least seven coronavirus cases among Brazil’s indigenous population so far.

The country has more than 18,000 confirmed Covid-19 cases, with 957 deaths, as Friday afternoon, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Centre.

On Thursday, Amazonas state warned its health system had been overwhelmed by the epidemic and all intensive care beds and ventilators had already been taken.

Rosemary Pinto, head of the state health system, has pleaded for people to follow social distancing orders aimed at shutting down all but essential activities to slow the spread of the virus.

“There are still too many people in the streets,” she said at a news conference.

“Families are sitting out on chairs in front of their homes. There are lines at the banks, including elderly people who are at risk, and that is why so many are dying.”

Additional reporting by Reuters