• Coronavirus The start of vaccination in Brazil turns into a defeat for Bolsonaro

  • Brazil Total collapse in Manaus: lack of oxygen forces transfer of patients to other states

The Attorney General's Office of the Republic of Brazil, equivalent in Spain to the Attorney General's Office, requested this Saturday the Supreme Court

to open a process to investigate the Minister of Health, Eduardo Pazuello

, for his possible responsibility in the health collapse that the city is experiencing of Manaus in the face of the Covid pandemic.

The request to the Supreme Federal Court was made by the attorney general, Augusto Aras, who considered the complaints filed by different political parties against Pazuello

for his alleged omission in the fight against coronavirus in the largest city in the Brazilian Amazon

.

According to complaints from opposition parties, Pazuello learned several days in advance that the Manaus health system would go into total collapse due to the

lack of beds to care for Covid patients and oxygen for the sick.

connected to mechanical respirators, and took no action to prevent the situation from escalating.

"Attentive to the dire situation in Manaus, the attorney general considered it necessary to open a process to investigate the facts," the Attorney General's Office said in a statement in which it reported on the petition to the highest court.

According to the note, the request was made after the attorney himself listened to Pazuello's explanations and considered them insufficient.

The minister admitted in a report sent to the Attorney General's Office that the White Martins company, responsible for the supply of hospital oxygen in the state of Amazonas, alerted the Ministry of Health on January 8 that it had run out of capacity to meet the high demand for the vital input.

This was because oxygen consumption in hospitals in this state grew from an average of 15,000 cubic meters per day at the end of last year

to 76,000 cubic meters per day in mid-January

, and White Martins only has the capacity to produce 28,200 meters cubic per day.

Despite this alert, the Ministry of Health

only launched an operation on January 12 to send oxygen to Manaus in military aircraft

, but in an insufficient volume to avoid the collapse that occurred from January 14, when part of the sick connected to mechanical respirators ran out of the element and began to die from suffocation.

"Considering that due to his possible untimely actions, the accused, who had the legal duty and the possibility to act to mitigate the results, may have incurred an omission for which he can be held responsible in the civil, administrative and criminal spheres, necessary a deepening of the investigation ", affirmed the attorney in his petition.

In the request, Aras asked that the Supreme Court initially summon the minister for an interrogation and

that he send the complaint to the Federal Police so that it could adopt the investigative measures it deems necessary

.

The health collapse in Manaus, which significantly increased deaths from Covid, forced the Brazilian government to mount an operation to transfer dozens of coronavirus patients to other cities and transport oxygen on at least four daily flights of military aircraft.

Despite being one of the states with the lowest population density in Brazil, the Amazon has accumulated 7,051 deaths and 248,561 infections by Covid so far and has

faced a second wave of the much more virulent and lethal pandemic since December

.

As a result of the increase in deaths from Covid, the number of burials in the cemeteries of Manaus reached a record 1,333 in the first 20 days of January, much higher than in any month.

Brazil, with 210 million inhabitants, is one of the epicenters of the pandemic;

the second country with the most deaths in the world from Covid-19 after the US, with some 216,445 deaths, and the third with the most infections, with 8.8 million cases.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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