The telltale symptoms began in late May, about a week after government medical workers made a routine visit to the Kanamari Indigenous community in a remote part of the Amazon: Elderly members of the group were struggling to breathe.

For months, as the coronavirus tore through Brazil, the Kanamari had sought to shield themselves from the pandemic by strictly limiting access to their riverside villages in the secluded Javari Valley, one of Brazil’s largest Indigenous territories.

But it seemed even there, the virus had reached them. Panic set in.

“Many people grabbed some clothes, a hammock and ran into the forest to hide,” said Thoda Kanamari, a leader of the union of Indigenous peoples in the vast territory, home to groups with little contact with the outside world. “But it was too late, everyone was already infected.”

Read the full article: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/19/world/americas/coronavirus-brazil-indigenous.html