By Tom Phillips and Fabiano Maisonnave
30 April 2020

Gravediggers carry a coffin during a collective burial of people who have died due to Covid-19, at the Parque Tarumã cemetery in Manaus on 28 April 2020. Photo: Bruno Kelly / Reuters
Gravediggers carry a coffin during a collective burial of people who have died due to Covid-19, at the Parque Tarumã cemetery in Manaus on 28 April 2020. Photo: Bruno Kelly / Reuters

MANAUS (The Guardian) – Day and night, the dead are delivered into the tawny Amazonian earth – the latest victims of a devastating pandemic now reaching deep into the heart of the Brazilian rainforest.

On Sunday 140 bodies were laid to rest in Manaus, the jungle-flanked capital of Amazonas state. On Saturday, 98. Normally the figure would be closer to 30 – but these are no longer normal times.

“It’s madness – just madness,” said Gilson de Freitas, a 30-year-old maintenance man whose mother, Rosemeire Rodrigues Silva, was one of 136 people buried there last Tuesday as local morticians set yet another grim daily record.

Freitas – who believes his mother contracted Covid-19 after being admitted to hospital following a stroke – recalled watching in despair as her remains were lowered into a muddy trench alongside perhaps 20 other coffins.

Aerial view of coffins being buried at an area where new graves have been dug at the Parque Tarumã cemetery in Manaus, Brazil, in April 2020. On 26 April 2020, 140 bodies of people killed by COVID-19 were laid to rest in Manaus, the jungle-flanked capital of Amazonas state. Normally the figure would be closer to 30 – but these are no longer normal times. Photo: Michael Dantas / AFP / Getty Images
Aerial view of coffins being buried at an area where new graves have been dug at the Parque Tarumã cemetery in Manaus, Brazil, in April 2020. On 26 April 2020, 140 bodies of people killed by COVID-19 were laid to rest in Manaus, the jungle-flanked capital of Amazonas state. Normally the figure would be closer to 30 – but these are no longer normal times. Photo: Michael Dantas / AFP / Getty Images

“They were just dumped there like dogs,” he said. “What are our lives worth now? Nothing.”

The city’s mayor, Arthur Virgílio, pleaded for urgent international help.

“We aren’t in a state of emergency – we’re well beyond that. We are in a state of utter disaster … like a country that is at war – and has lost,” he said.

“It’s tragic surrealism … I can’t stop thinking about Gabriel García Márquez when I think about the situation Manaus is facing.” [more]

‘Utter disaster’: Manaus fills mass graves as Covid-19 hits the Amazon