Brazil has reported more than 775,000 cases of the new coronavirus and has attributed more than 39,800 deaths to the disease so far, with daily death tolls continuing to climb in recent days—as many as 1,200 per day. While President Jair Bolsonaro has tried to downplay the threat, local authorities and communities are working hard to slow the spread of the virus, as well as to treat those affected. Tarso Sarraf, a photographer working for Agence France-Presse, recently traveled with health-care workers attending to the residents of small river communities and larger towns in Marajo Island, at the mouth of the Amazon River, in Brazil’s Para state.
Coronavirus: Health Care in Brazil’s River Communities
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Health-care workers from the city of Melgaco ride a boat ambulance on their way back from visiting eight families that live without electricity in a small riverside community, amid concern over the spread of the coronavirus, in the southwest of Marajo Island, Brazil, on June 9, 2020. #
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A government medical worker, in a joint operation with military police, prepares to check passengers on boats in Melgaco Bay, southwest of the island of Marajo, Brazil, on May 27, 2020. People aboard small boats, ferries, and ships on the river had their body temperature checked as authorities try to combat the new coronavirus. #
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Gravediggers wearing protective clothing carry the coffin of a victim of the novel coronavirus for burial at a cemetery in the city of Breves, in the Brazilian state of Para, on May 30, 2020. #
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Government health-care workers travel by boat to visit a riverside community to test its residents, as a measure against the coronavirus pandemic in the southwest of Marajo Island on June 1, 2020. #
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Health-care workers from the city of Melgaco ride a boat ambulance after visiting eight families that live without electricity in a small riverside community at the Quara River, in the state of Para, Brazil, on June 9, 2020. #
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A coronavirus patient reacts as she prepares to be transferred by ambulance boat to a hospital in Breves, after being hospitalized for five days in Melgaco, on June 10, 2020. #
Tarso Sarraf / AFP / Getty
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