Brazil: Amazon capital rolls out vaccination amid coronavirus surge

Vaccinations against COVID-19 reached Brazil's vast Amazonas state on Monday where the current critical situation in hospitals makes their need even more pressing.

In the riverside city of Manaus, state Governor Wilson Lima presided over a ceremony initiating a vaccination campaign he said will be aggressively pursued in the coming days and weeks to curb a resurgence of the coronavirus.

"Our efforts are to save lives, the more we can achieve that, the more people will be saved and we can achieve that if we are united," Lima said.

The campaign began with the inoculation of 33-year-old Vanda Ortega, a Witoto Indigenous tribal member and nursing aide, who was given the first dose of CoronaVac, a vaccine developed by Beijing-based biopharmaceutical company Sinovac.

Amazonas has recorded at least 231,000 cases of the virus since the start of the pandemic, according to figures from Johns Hopkins University, but is in the midst of a devastating resurgence and a lack of oxygen supplies.

Hospitals in Manaus, an isolated city of 2.2 million people, have admitted few new COVID-19 patients, causing many to suffer from the disease at home and some to die.

Doctors in the Amazon rainforest’s biggest city are having to choose which COVID-19 patients can breathe amid dwindling oxygen stocks.

Other Brazilian states have offered to receive patients and decongest Manaus’ health system.

Brazil's pandemic response has been hampered by politics and a lack of coordination between State and Federal authorities, according to critics.

The country is beginning an immunization program with 6 million doses of CoronaVac in multiple states, and hopes to distribute up to 46 million more doses by the middle of this year.